Christianity

[iambiguous]

iam asked (rhetorically)...

"Note to henry quirk: Have you seen the videos?"

No.

"Has IC linked them to you?"

No.

"After all, you two are best buds here."

Yes.

"His first priority must be to save your soul. Right?"

Hell if I know: ask him.

How bizarre is this?

First of all, okay, in part, I asked henry if he had seen the video tongue in cheek.

But I have also made it rather clear that I am dead serious about IC's claim that the Christian God does in fact reside in Heaven. I was once a Christian myself. I was once very much comforted and consoled by my faith. I lost it. But I've been coming to places like this now for years trying to get it back again.

Now, henry and IC are friends here. Maybe in reality. Maybe just virtually in sharing the same conservative moral and political convictions. But henry does not believe in the Christian God. His soul is on the line. It's dangling over the abyss. And what is the measly 70 odd years we exist on this side of the grave compared to all of eternity?!!

So, with a straight face, henry is going to tell us that his best buddy IC has not made every effort to bring him over to accepting Jesus Christ as his personal savior?!!

HOW DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL?!!!



Note to others:

Please scrap all of the "up in the spiritual clouds" intellectual contraption bullshit that goes on here long enough to come back around to why God and religion exist in the first place: to anchor our souls to an objective morality on this side of the grave and to provide our souls with immortality and salvation on the other side.

Have IC link you to the most potent video evidence he has come across. Proof he says that the Christian God does reside in Heaven. That He is the real deal and that Judgment Day is coming for each one of us.

[Immanuel Can]

I have also made it rather clear that I am dead serious about IC's claim that the Christian God does in fact reside in Heaven.

Yet not serious enough to watch even one of the videos you were sent?

I was once a Christian myself. I was once very much comforted and consoled by my faith. I lost it. But I've been coming to places like this now for years trying to get it back again.

Well, what sort of "Christian" were you? After all, there are many people who use that title, but a great many don't even really know what it means: for example, we could point to what's called "Christian Science" (the gnostic cult), or the fact that Muslims refer to everybody born in the West as "Christian," or that Christmas is alleged to be a "Christian holiday," or even that, in secular terms, "Christian" once meant only the same as "civilized," as "I was raised in a Christian country." So what specific sort of "Christian" were you?

So, with a straight face, henry is going to tell us that his best buddy IC has not made every effort to bring him over to accepting Jesus Christ as his personal savior?

Henry hasn't said that. It's interesting that you think he's going to. Maybe you'd better ask him.

[iambiguous]

Why We Shouldn't Hate Philosophy
Michael Gleghorn at the Bible.org site

In Colossians 2:8 (KJV), the apostle Paul wrote, “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” What does this verse mean? Is Paul saying that Christians shouldn’t study philosophy?

First of all, what on Earth does a philosophy "which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world" even mean? Any Christians here care to explore this given particular contexts?

To understand what Paul wrote, my dear child Iambiguous, you would have to grasp, and accept, Paul’s real experience of God. But let’s establish a functional, base-truth here: you can’t make any sense of Paul, nor his belief-relationship, because you do not “believe in God” and cannot consider it a genuine category. God does not exist for you. Therefore Paul is deranged, mad or hallucinating.

Again, the usual "base-truth" bullshit we get from him.

What is the actual evidence that Paul provides in the Bible that the Christian God does in fact exist? And how are there not similar accounts from similar characters in the scriptures of any number of these folks...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

...as well?

Sure, as with Christ, he may have existed historically. As did Muhammad and Buddha and other religious icons. But how on Earth does that establish the actual existence of a God, the God, my God beyond a "leap of faith"?

Again, let me remind AJ of what is actually at stake here: objective morality here and now, immortality and salvation there and then.

So, re IC, we are supposed to become Christians because the Christian Bible tells us that God does in fact exist? And that the Bible must be true because it is, in fact, the word of God?

But going even further, Paul is speaking to pagans and pagan belief, and therefore you would have to understand what sort of divinity they conceived of and then understood that Paul is operating from an incomparable god-picture. The pagan “gods” were earth-processes (to put it very generally) and not a monotheistic entity.

More "intellectual" bullshit of course. Let's spend the next few pages here grappling with the "divinity" of the Pagans. We can invite Maia to contribute.

You would need to grasp that the divine entity Paul realized was real and potent and that communicated with Christian believers, was in all respects a fundamentally new concept and potentiality for those living with and under an extremely different concept.

No, really, you tell me: how does this get you any closer to establishing that the Christian God is in fact the real deal and that if you don't accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior you may well burn in Hell for all of eternity.

This New God if you will presages extremely radical new things and literally opened up a new world of possibilities.

The Advent of Christ should therefore be understood as a picture of God that comes from outside of “the rudiments of the world”

Outside the "rudiments of the world"!!!

And that's certainly self-explanatory.

Had you been there, and had you had the opportunity to explain your sterling doctrines of sheer moral nihilism you’d have changed history!

But we're not there, we're here. And, historically, it was Nietzsche who speculated about human morality in a No God world. I merely eschew his own Übermensch philosophical contraption and suggest that it is reasonable instead to be "fractured and fragmented" in a No God world given the arguments I make in these threads:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

Then I ask the objectivists among us how, given a particular context, their own precious Self in the is/ought world is nothing at all like that. And why their own sets of assumptions and conclusions regarding the human condition are unequivocally more rational than the assumptions and conclusions of these...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

....guys and gals.

And not just "theoretically" up in the didactic -- pedantic? -- clouds that AJ clings to.



Note to Satyr:

He's one of yours, isn't he?

[iambiguous]

I have also made it rather clear that I am dead serious about IC's claim that the Christian God does in fact reside in Heaven.

Yet not serious enough to watch even one of the videos you were sent?

As I noted above, forget about me.

Think of all the others here who have not accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior. You claim that the information in these videos established [for you] all the proof you needed to abandon a mere "leap of faith" and were now convinced that in fact the Christian God did reside in Heaven. And certainly one or two of the 16 videos contained the most persuasive evidence of all.

Yet you will not link them to folks here other than me who have not come over to Christ? Again, explain that to me.

And if you link me to, say, the top three most powerful videos, I promise you I will watch them in their entirely and discuss my reaction with you here.

I was once a Christian myself. I was once very much comforted and consoled by my faith. I lost it. But I've been coming to places like this now for years trying to get it back again.

Well, what sort of "Christian" were you? After all, there are many people who use that title, but a great many don't even really know what it means: for example, we could point to what's called "Christian Science" (the gnostic cult), or the fact that Muslims refer to everybody born in the West as "Christian," or that Christmas is alleged to be a "Christian holiday," or even that, in secular terms, "Christian" once meant only the same as "civilized," as "I was raised in a Christian country." So what specific sort of "Christian" were you?

No, no, take that technical/historical bullshit up with AJ. It won't work with me. I'm interested only to coming back to Christianity. You claim that however others understand or misunderstand the One True Christianity [your understanding of it], the Christian God does in fact exist. That's the most important thing given what is at stake on both sides of the grave. Right? So, again, for henry and others here who are not me, link them to the video.

Or explain why you won't.

So, with a straight face, henry is going to tell us that his best buddy IC has not made every effort to bring him over to accepting Jesus Christ as his personal savior?

HOW DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL?!!!

Henry hasn't said that. It's interesting that you think he's going to. Maybe you'd better ask him.

Well, have you or have you not made an effort to bring henry over to Christ? And given the stakes involved why on earth would you not attempt to?

Also, given that henry, as a Deist, is himself not sure what the hell happens to mere mortals after they die, how about other Deists?

"Immortality of the soul

Different Deists had different beliefs about the immortality of the soul, about the existence of Hell and damnation to punish the wicked, and the existence of Heaven to reward the virtuous. Anthony Collins, Bolingbroke, Thomas Chubb, and Peter Annet were materialists and either denied or doubted the immortality of the soul. Benjamin Franklin believed in reincarnation or resurrection. Lord Herbert of Cherbury and William Wollaston held that souls exist, survive death, and in the afterlife are rewarded or punished by God for their behavior in life. Thomas Paine believed in the "probability" of the immortality of the soul." wiki

You, on the other hand, are rather adamant regarding the fate of those who refuse to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior: their souls are doomed...damned.



Note to henry:

What's the skinny here with you and IC and Jesus Christ?

[Immanuel Can]

I have also made it rather clear that I am dead serious about IC's claim that the Christian God does in fact reside in Heaven.

Yet not serious enough to watch even one of the videos you were sent?

As I noted above, forget about me.

Nope. I'm exclusively interested in you, because your attitude is so bizarre. You claim to be "serious" about these things, and yet seem petrified to watch any of the videos. Is it that you think that if you watch even one, you're going to find your unfaith undermined?

I would expect that was a reasonable worry. It's so hard to stay an Atheist. As the ex-Atheist C.S. Lewis put it, "“Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side.”

And if you link me to, say, the top three most powerful videos, I promise you I will watch them in their entirely and discuss my reaction with you here.

"Most powerful" depends on what is relevant to you. Is it the argument from evil, the Kalaam, the Design Hypothesis...

But I'll give you three to start with. The Kalaam, the Fine Tuning Argument and the Moral argument. Go.

I was once a Christian myself. I was once very much comforted and consoled by my faith. I lost it. But I've been coming to places like this now for years trying to get it back again.

Well, what sort of "Christian" were you? After all, there are many people who use that title, but a great many don't even really know what it means: for example, we could point to what's called "Christian Science" (the gnostic cult), or the fact that Muslims refer to everybody born in the West as "Christian," or that Christmas is alleged to be a "Christian holiday," or even that, in secular terms, "Christian" once meant only the same as "civilized," as "I was raised in a Christian country." So what specific sort of "Christian" were you?

No, no, take that technical/historical bullshit up with AJ.

It's not a bit technical. It's a basic question.

I marvel that you won't answer it...What are you afraid will happen?

[iambiguous]

Just a reminder that, in regard to IC, our exchanges are still deemed by me to be "just entertainment". Although, sure, I'm interested in hearing from others who actually do take him seriously in regard to his claims about the Christian God.

Why do you take him seriously?

Yet not serious enough to watch even one of the videos you were sent?

As I noted above, forget about me.

Nope. I'm exclusively interested in you, because your attitude is so bizarre. You claim to be "serious" about these things, and yet seem petrified to watch any of the videos. Is it that you think that if you watch even one, you're going to find your unfaith undermined?

Undermined?! I want to have my faith restored!! Hardly a day goes by that I don't think back on how important my faith in God once was. To believe my life had an essential meaning and purpose. To believe in God's moral Commandments. To believe immortality and salvation awaited me.

Only you claim to have the sort of proof able to convince me that a leap of faith itself can be put aside and that one can actually know that the Christian God does in fact reside in Heaven.

Petrified to watch them? I've been clamoring for months now to have you link me to the videos that impressed you the most regarding evidence you yourself needed to go beyond a mere "leap of faith"...to know that the Christian God resided in Heaven.

And you won't even provide that link to others here who are at risk of eternal damnation.

Look, all I'm attempting to do here is to get you to admit to yourself that the reason you won't link it is because you know that the evidence really isn't there. That it still involves a leap of faith to accept it.

Bottom line:

Anyone who truly did believe they had demonstrable evidence that a God, the God, their God did in fact exist would do everything in their power to spread the news.

I would expect that was a reasonable worry. It's so hard to stay an Atheist. As the ex-Atheist C.S. Lewis put it, "“Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side.”

Okay, what demonstrable evidence did he provide the world that in fact the Christian God resides in Heaven. How was his belief not just another "leap of faith". It's just that some leaps are blinder than others. Not every Christian can be a Kierkegaard.

And if you link me to, say, the top three most powerful videos, I promise you I will watch them in their entirely and discuss my reaction with you here.

"Most powerful" depends on what is relevant to you. Is it the argument from evil, the Kalaam, the Design Hypothesis...

But I'll give you three to start with. The Kalaam, the Fine Tuning Argument and the Moral argument. Go.

Yo, AJ! Yo, Harry!! You're up!!! Spend pages with him here nailing this down.

Up in the spiritual clouds for example.

[Immanuel Can]

Undermined?! I want to have my faith restored!!

And exactly which "faith" is that? Christian Scientist? Mormon? Catholic? Jehovah's Witness? Pentecostal? Lutheran? Methodist?...

[Alexis Jacobi]

What is the actual evidence that Paul provides in the Bible that the Christian God does in fact exist? And how are there not similar accounts from similar characters in the scriptures of any number of these folks...

Had you read the Gospel accounts you’d be able to answer that question yourself.

I find you exceedingly tedious and aside from what I offered to you have no interest in a conversation with you on these topics. What I did write I believe to be sound however.

At the same time I am not one to offer Christian apologetics as if I am a believer trying to convince a non-believer.

I believe I can say that if it is true that you desire to restore your faith that you are going about it in a way that thoroughly blocks you.

My own *faith* in a transcendental divinity began before I had any comprehension of what Christianity actually was. I discerned that something responded to me because of an inner opening or receptivity.

Personally, and honing in on that “essence”, I understand “it” (that transcendent reality) to come from the Hebrew-Christian source. So in this specific sense I don’t see myself as a pagan, but neither could I say that I am a Christian in any true sense.

If you’ve read anything I write you’d know that I don’t place great stock in ‘the picture’ but rather what lies behind it.

I have a two-volume set The Theology of Saint Paul by Fernand Prat S.J. that your dumb ass has inspired me to study. I am definitely certain that Saint Paul has had an unreally profound influence on this world (but I more or less knew that before) and I sense this is because of the source of his revelation.

More when I know more ….

And then I like voyaging by intellectual skyhooks from one upper region to another.

[Gary Childress]

To understand what Paul wrote, my dear child Iambiguous, you would have to grasp, and accept, Paul’s real experience of God. But let’s establish a functional, base-truth here: you can’t make any sense of Paul, nor his belief-relationship, because you do not “believe in God” and cannot consider it a genuine category. God does not exist for you. Therefore Paul is deranged, mad or hallucinating.

Right?

Yes. Yes. Paul could have been right. Or he could have been wrong. If we're going to empathize with "poor" Paul (who--prior to his "conversion"--apparently committed what can only be construed as the ruthless murder of people who didn't have officially sanctioned religious beliefs), maybe we should empathize with all the people who've had out-of-wedlock sex and who've been condemned as "sinners" and alienated by the Hebrew god that Christians pledge allegiance to. Basically, this all comes down to who is going to lead a society today, those who insist God is essentially a crabby, overbearing father in the sky who specially "chose" them or those who admit that none of us really know nor probably can know with certianty what the fuck made or runs this world 'behind the scenes' or whatever (if anything does).

All I can say with certainty, whatever created and/or runs this world, in no way made me in its "image". I stopped hunting at age 12 when I shot a rabbit and felt horrible for it after the shock because it screamed and scampered on its blasted-up hind legs when I approached it. I don't like the thought of inflicting horrible suffering on other living beings and I can't escape from needing to do that just to serve my survival needs. Does it sound like the creator of all that materially is and I have anything at all in common? I would hope not. You wouldn't catch me stooping to the level s/he/it did when the world was created the way it was.

If I created a world, I'd make rocks and dirt nutritious just so I could survive on that instead of having to murder some other living being that (like me) doesn't want to be murdered.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The insurmountable problem that Gary externalizes here, and has developed now for many months, is not a problem nor the problem that I face personally. So his issue, what trips him up, is not an issue that trips me up.

My take here, my understanding, is that it is now impossible and it will remain impossible to make a suggestion, or provide some conceptual pathway, that either Iambiguous or poor Gary will be influenced by. So, why bother?

My own issue has been, and still is, not so much existential in the sense of a rebellion against the nature of life on this planet, in this manifest realm where woe and tribulation are constants, but far more on an internal ethical level: to arrive at a sort of certainty about the right way to conduct myself.

The ancient world -- the Greek world, the Roman world -- were possibly a hundred times more brutal than the world we live in now (aside from our monstrous wars which are notable). The Roman conquest of Gaul involved the killing of a million souls (more or less) and no one batted an eye. So, that Saul oppressed, beat, or killed some Christians is not of much consequence. But no one could assert that his own conversion was not extremely real. (Well, I guess one could but I do not think successfully).

Gary has doubts about Paul's experience -- but here's the deal: Gary has no internal spiritual life (that I have been able to discern) and so the idea and the concept of such -- what this means -- is a totally foreign territory. I suspect that something similar is also so for Iambiguous. I've often wondered why this is. Why is it that some people have an inner life that is described as 'spiritual' and others seem entirely locked out of it?

There are numerous other questions in Gary's post but they are not questions that should be dealt with as personal issues. But they can be talked about if in general terms. (For example the issue of sexual morality).

[Gary Childress]

If you want to speak to me AJ, then please feel free to do so. I'm not going to brook nonsense if that's what you're afraid of.

You are 100% right when you state: "Gary has no internal spiritual life (that [you] have been able to discern) Indeed there's a LOT you don't seem to know about me. You claim to have "certainty" about the "right" way to conduct yourself. Apparently, you're much more "right" than I am when you denounce homosexuality, or the BS going around as "gender dysphoria". I on the other hand (for whatever reason) have a greater problem with people who foist BS religious arguments on us all.

Apparently if one doesn't believe in Yahweh (what amounts to a Hebrew war god), one is incapable of believing that love is a good emotion for a human being to foster (not that you or IC would have any idea how to "love" a homosexual or someone who disagrees with your BS non-logic based arguments which amount to little more than "I can empathize with religious (Christian) people"). Let's not even explore whether their beliefs actually make any rational sense given the world we ACTUALLY experience--unless of course, the "benevolent" God-who-created-us-in-his-own-image believers live in cloud tuti fruiti land or something where magic unicorns play whereas I don't seem to.

Apparently, I'm just not the same kind of human being as Christians are. I've had intense hyper-religious visions. I've even had intense visions about fictional movies I've seen and stories I've read that had nothing directly to do with religion. Does that necessarily mean that Christianity is just another delusion that people have when they are in a "Christain" society? No. Does it make me think that it's possible that Christian mystics get intense visions about stories that speak strongly to them and express a major issue in their life, just as some Buddhists might have different intense visions about different stories that they are exposed to that express major issues in their lives?

[/rant]

[iambiguous]

Undermined?! I want to have my faith restored!! Hardly a day goes by that I don't think back on how important my faith in God once was. To believe my life had an essential meaning and purpose. To believe in God's moral Commandments. To believe immortality and salvation awaited me.

Only you claim to have the sort of proof able to convince me that a leap of faith itself can be put aside and that one can actually know that the Christian God does in fact reside in Heaven.

Petrified to watch them? I've been clamoring for months now to have you link me to the videos that impressed you the most regarding evidence you yourself needed to go beyond a mere "leap of faith"...to know that the Christian God resided in Heaven.

And you won't even provide that link to others here who are at risk of eternal damnation.

Look, all I'm attempting to do here is to get you to admit to yourself that the reason you won't link it is because you know that the evidence really isn't there. That it still involves a leap of faith to accept it.

Bottom line:

Anyone who truly did believe they had demonstrable evidence that a God, the God, their God did in fact exist would do everything in their power to spread the news.

And exactly which "faith" is that? Christian Scientist? Mormon? Catholic? Jehovah's Witness? Pentecostal? Lutheran? Methodist?...

Well, the denomination able to provide me with the most persuasive video of course.

But let's get back to that bottom line above:

Anyone who truly did believe they had demonstrable evidence that a God, the God, their God did in fact exist would do everything in their power to spread the news.

Come on, IC really entertain me this time. Please explain why you refuse to link henry and others here to the most potent video evidence.



Note to others:

Aside from my suggestion that he won't because he knows the evidence is simply not there, what do you suppose might stop him from providing the link?

[Alexis Jacobi]

If you want to speak to me AJ, then please feel free to do so. I'm not going to brook nonsense if that's what you're afraid of.

Here Gary asks for something that I will not give. I have sound reasons for my choices.

[Gary Childress]

If you want to speak to me AJ, then please feel free to do so. I'm not going to brook nonsense if that's what you're afraid of.

Here Gary asks for something that I will not give. I have sound reasons for my choices.

Kids will be kids. Philosophy romper room apparently.

[Gary Childress]

If you want to speak to me AJ, then please feel free to do so. I'm not going to brook nonsense if that's what you're afraid of.

Here Gary asks for something that I will not give. I have sound reasons for my choices.

I imagine most of them revolve around you having nothing to say that amounts to anything more than a subjective opinion or preference.