Christianity

[henry quirk]

As long as you keep substituting your meanings for mine what I post will flummox you.

I respond to what I read. Substituting meanings? Certainly not. Reading unclear and contradictory statements, yes. Open to your corrections, certainly. There is no advantage in deliberate misreading and that is not my intention.

Really? Look here...

You recognize good stewardship as opposed to bad stewardship but you also use the word squandered which could have other connotations.

...yes, squandered could suggest or impart a flavor. But I was plain in my use. In context: squandered is to waste. Nuthin' more or less. Or stewardship: in context I use it as I would management, no more or less. You had no need to struggle with connotations. But you did. You had no need, or call, to recast my words, to inject meanings, or infer meanings, I myself didn't project. But you did.

You may not have intended to substitute, but you did.

unclear and contradictory statements

My posts aren't polished, filigreed, but there's nuthin' hazy or inconsistent about them or my views. The fault lies with the reader, not the writer.

[Dubious]

why should god have anything to do with humans who are certainly not equal in status, being nothing more than "bio-machinery" ourselves, which, strangely enough is exactly how it seems to be.

I don't think He does (not directly); we're not equal, no, but we are 'in His image' (we're not just meat);

...a lot of wishful thinking going on here! The fact is, we are just meat and edible to boot in emergencies like every other warm-blooded mammalian. Of course if you're over 55 you may first have to be marinated prior to consumption!

As for higher level animals, meaning those below us like dogs, cats, and monkeys of all kinds, etc., have a wide range of emotions which includes psychological trauma as has already been widely established not unlike humans who undergo such episodes.

As for humans being made in god's image - that's so stupid, it's hard to fathom. Did we only catch up to His image when we became homo sapien?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Describe wasp consciousness/sentience. What is it a wasp does that sets it apart from a Roomba: tell me.

If your view is that the physical being, the life history, and the hundreds of thousands and millions of years of evolution that made a wasp — can in any way be compared to a Roomba robotic vacuum machine, I am not going to be able to change your mind.

So I politely decline.

Look into it.

[henry quirk]

...a lot of wishful thinking going on here!

Nope. I just go where the evidences take me.

The fact is, we are just meat and edible to boot in emergencies like every other warm-blooded mammalian.

We are edible, but we aren't just meat.

Of course if you're over 55 you may first have to be marinated prior to consumption!

I'd need a lot of tenderizin'.

As for higher level animals, meaning those below us like dogs, cats, and monkeys of all kinds, etc., have a wide range of emotions which includes psychological trauma as has already been widely established not unlike humans who undergo such episodes.

How was this established?

As for humans being made in god's image - that's so stupid, it's hard to fathom. Did we only catch up to His image when we became homo sapien?

We're 'in His image' becuz, like Him, we're free wills, persons.

[henry quirk]

My point: the Roomba is no more or less conscious than the wasp. It's priorities are different, of course, but functionally it is open to its surroundings like the wasp. Like the wasp it has canned responses. And like the wasp it is absent mind.

It is conscious/sentient (open to its surroundings and capable of reaction) and wholly incapable of placing itself in its surroundings. It assesses nuthin', concludes nuthin', imagines and surmises nuthin', judges nuthin'. Neither does the wasp. Neither does most or all of non-human life.

[Dubious]

As for higher level animals, meaning those below us like dogs, cats, and monkeys of all kinds, etc., have a wide range of emotions which includes psychological trauma as has already been widely established not unlike humans who undergo such episodes.

How was this established?

It's hardly a new discovery. You're still back in the days of Descartes who considered animals as nothing more than mindless automatons completely without feeling especially on any emotional level. He had no problem and saw nothing wrong with nailing live dogs to a board and performing vivisection. When they howled in pain it was explained as an automatic reaction only which didn't really mean anything.

Just goes to show how even a genius can be a total absolute asshole and idiot.

There are all kinds of research on the subject. You could easily find it yourself...if you had a mind to. But here's one anyway...
https://sites.bu.edu/daniellerousseau/2 ... n-animals/

But I didn't need any articles to tell me that. In my teens, I grew up in the country in the company of dogs and cats more than with humans; the interaction and observation of them told me a story very different from the one you're telling; one much more in tune with what modern research has already established regarding the emotional intelligence and complexity of higher-level animals.

As for humans being made in god's image - that's so stupid, it's hard to fathom. Did we only catch up to His image when we became homo sapien?

We're 'in His image' becuz, like Him, we're free wills, persons.

Ah so! So simple! Didn't realize that because of our "supposed" free will that it would so obviously result in us humans being made in His image.

[Age]

As long as you keep substituting your meanings for mine what I post will flummox you.

I respond to what I read. Substituting meanings? Certainly not. Reading unclear and contradictory statements, yes. Open to your corrections, certainly. There is no advantage in deliberate misreading and that is not my intention.

Really? Look here...

You recognize good stewardship as opposed to bad stewardship but you also use the word squandered which could have other connotations.

...yes, squandered could suggest or impart a flavor. But I was plain in my use. In context: squandered is to waste. Nuthin' more or less. Or stewardship: in context I use it as I would management, no more or less. You had no need to struggle with connotations. But you did. You had no need, or call, to recast my words, to inject meanings, or infer meanings, I myself didn't project. But you did.

You may not have intended to substitute, but you did.

unclear and contradictory statements

My posts aren't polished, filigreed, but there's nuthin' hazy or inconsistent about them or my views. The fault lies with the reader, not the writer.

LOL ah the irony here.

The fault lies with 'the reader', UNTIL 'you' become 'the reader', then 'the fault', miraculously, and very coincidentally, lies with 'the writer'.

[Age]

...a lot of wishful thinking going on here!

Nope. I just go where the evidences take me.

The fact is, we are just meat and edible to boot in emergencies like every other warm-blooded mammalian.

We are edible, but we aren't just meat.

REALLY? So, if 'we' are NOT just 'meat', then what else are 'we', EXACTLY?

Also, how do 'you' now explain the CONTRADICTION here from when you SAID and CLAIMED that 'I', "henry quirk", am 'the body'?

But 'you' will NOT CLARIFY 'your' OWN view and position here BECAUSE to do so would create FURTHER CONTRADICTIONS, and/or cause MORE INCONSISTENCIES.

Of course if you're over 55 you may first have to be marinated prior to consumption!

I'd need a lot of tenderizin'.

As for higher level animals, meaning those below us like dogs, cats, and monkeys of all kinds, etc., have a wide range of emotions which includes psychological trauma as has already been widely established not unlike humans who undergo such episodes.

How was this established?

As for humans being made in god's image - that's so stupid, it's hard to fathom. Did we only catch up to His image when we became homo sapien?

We're 'in His image' becuz, like Him, we're free wills, persons.

LOL Do 'you' STILL BELIEVE that God is A 'person'?

[Age]

My point: the Roomba is no more or less conscious than the wasp. It's priorities are different, of course, but functionally it is open to its surroundings like the wasp. Like the wasp it has canned responses. And like the wasp it is absent mind.

It is conscious/sentient (open to its surroundings and capable of reaction) and wholly incapable of placing itself in its surroundings. It assesses nuthin', concludes nuthin', imagines and surmises nuthin', judges nuthin'. Neither does the wasp. Neither does most or all of non-human life.

How was 'this' established, EXACTLY?

[henry quirk]

https://sites.bu.edu/daniellerousseau/2 ... n-animals/

Kumar (2017) discusses PTSD in her cat Lola. In May of 2017 in Afghanistan, a tanker truck was bombed. The attack claimed more than 150 lives and injured at least 700 others. The impact of the explosion was felt several miles away, breaking windows and cracking ceilings. 20 minutes after the explosion, Lola was hiding. For the next week, Lola was edgy. She was startled by small sounds and she would follow the author everywhere. Lola would wail when Kumar left the house and be clingy when she returned. She started eating less and losing weight. According to Kumar (2017), the U.S. military has seen this reaction to stress in its working dogs. About 5 percent of the dogs that have served in Afghanistan and Iraq suffer from “canine PTSD,” making some dogs aggressive, timid, or unable to do their jobs.

Sounds, to me, like there's a whole lotta anthropomorphizing going on here. She observed seemingly human responses in a non-human. Now, she may be spot on, but it's not a given she is.

Romm (2016) discusses Elsom, a chimpanzee who experienced PTSD. Elsom’s mother died with he was 13. At age 15, he suffered a serious injury to his arm. He disappeared for a few months afterward and isolated himself from his community. Upon his return, he was different. He was easily agitated and angry. He was more fearful and had difficulty sleeping. Romm (2016) states that animal mental illness can be triggered by many of the same factors that unleash mental illness in humans, including the loss of family or companions, loss of freedom, stress, trauma, and abuse.

Ditto.

But I didn't need any articles to tell me that. In my teens, I grew up in the country in the company of dogs and cats more than with humans; the interaction and observation of them told me a story very different from the one you're telling; one much more in tune with what modern research has already established regarding the emotional intelligence and complexity of higher-level animals.

As I say, up-thread: I'm a country boy. I've known a few dogs, cats, and horses that seemed like free wills -- like persons -- to me. It's entirely possible they were. It's equally possible I anthropomorphized the lot.

Most dogs, cats, horses, and all sheep, geese, chickens, fish were, however, machines, reacting meat.

Ah so! So simple!

Yes, it is. Free wills created by the Free Will.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Well, basically that one can discuss the moral and political and religious conflagrations of the day largely up in the didactic/pedantic intellectual clouds.

What amazes me and has always amazed me is the degree to which you show yourself captured by your own rhetoric. In this sentence you have established, a priori, that to think about things is to locate oneself in didactic/pedantic clouds. Your assertion is mind-bendingly stupid and yet you really seem to believe what you write. Moral and political and religious (theological) issues all involve and depend on structures of ideas. Indeed, you nut, philosophy itself is fully the territory that you denigrate.

So what the fuck are you doing here dope!

In order to arrive at clarity about why there is factionalism, division and social and civil strife, you have to be able to see into the sort of idea structures and *worldview* that each camp is operating from. But in this task you, Iambiguous, are useless. You are not capable of thinking things through. Your thinking is more emoting. And your *inimitable method* is to send up the most incredible walls of words that anyone posts on this forum where you rehearse day after day, month after month, year after year, the same neurotic and overblown nonsense.

What you require, possibly in addition to a good therapist, is to go yourself into those clouds and sort things out. Wonderful it would be if you'd have done this years back. But no your rehearsals are meant to be inflictions that all others must suffer!

My point is there are those who insist that, using the tools of philosophy, one can arrive at the optimal -- most rational -- frame of mind. Whereas I suggest that down through the ages there have always been "conflicting goods" being contended. And that these individual convictions are acquired far more from points of view derived existentially from the life that one lived out in a particular world historically and culturally. And, as well, in a world teeming with contingency, chance and change. And that the Benjamín Button Syndrome is entirely applicable to the is/ought world in turn.

Here you rehearse a more or less typical projection of yours. It is true that systems of philosophy and schools of philosophy develop *camps of thought* to which one attaches oneself or one opposes and has issues with. And it is also true that it is natural that man try to establish an explication of *reality* that seems to concord or sum-up the nature of the *actuality*.

Your mind has about 3 moving parts so that once you have (so brilliantly! so acutely!) noticed that different schools of thought and interpretation indeed exist, that there are *conflicting goods being contended*. Is this the conclusion of your Life Work? We will write it on your gravestone then:

"Here lies a man who noticed that conflicts exist. He was adamant that different perspectives depended on Dasein".

We might look for some poem where *a world teeming in contingency, chance and change* is movingly expressed and engrave it there too -- a general but a solemn epitaph. I am unsure how to reference Benjamin Button here but -- ok I've got it -- we will be sure to bring him up in the eulogy.

Has no one yet made it plain that you are operating within moronic limits? One year or so of you is quite enough!

OK, now back to the Philosophical and Existential Neurosis:

I'd asked you "If you are unsure don’t you think you need to become certain?"

The philosophical neurotic, naturally, simply restates the terms of his neurosis. This restatement has appeared every day, every week, every month and every year for God knows how long. The tires have turned, and will turn, in the same mud puddle until the Universe collapses on itself.

On the contrary, that frame of mind no longer works for me. Why? Because I'm no less fractured and fragmented myself regarding them. Instead, I've managed to think myself into believing that in a No God world -- my own subjective rooted existentially in dasein assumption only -- an objectivist invents God or deontology or ideology or biological imperatives or one or another Ism, in order to comfort and console himself. How? By being able to anchor the Real Me in the Right Thing To Do.

I asked you, idiot, this direct question:

In what ways — I refer to things I’ve written on this forum — have you concluded my interactions with Blacks, women, homosexuals and Jews? Are you referring to the “pastiche person” of Satyr, Ecmandu, Alexis (and others?) or are you actually referring to me? This clarification is important.

And this is your response?!?

Look, we all know that when interacting with someone virtually, online, we never really know for sure who this person is. Or what their motivation and intention is.

I'm just asking you to explore your own views on blacks, women, homosexuals and Jews down out of the intellectual clouds. You are in a community interacting with them. You are in a position of power such that sustaining what you construe to be the "best of all possible communities" is within reach. Okay, there's how I imagine the Nazis here. Now, how would your community be different?

I am asking you to pull your head out of your asshole, jerk. You insinuate many things that you are unable to back up. If you want to discuss issues that pertain to race and the sorts of conflicts that exist in that realm, make it plain. If you have specific ideas in that domain, reveal them. If you are *conflicted & fragmented* in those areas then talk about that. But you do not do that. Instead you *project* and -- always! -- it reduces to Nazis and Nazism.

What the fuck is this?!?

You are in a position of power such that sustaining what you construe to be the "best of all possible communities" is within reach.

Talk about yourself, moron.

This is not a philosophy forum it is a mental neurotic's treatment center.

With that said, I make my promise to one and to all: I will singlehandedly cure each and everyone of you! But you must you MUST subscribe to the Email Course! Don't turn away from Salvation! Lo it is come!

[iambiguous]

Note to others:

First of all, allow me to bring to your attention the manner in which I have reconfigured him into Satyr below. If, in fact, he is not Satyr himself. The part where he gets so worked up -- infuriated -- by the points I raise about him that he just can't helped himself: the Stooge emerges.

And, of course, that just confirms all the more how close I am coming to bringing him around to my own frame of mind. After all, he is intelligent enough to grasp that my points about objectivism, about dasein, about Will Durant's "epistemologists" may well be applicable to him.

Well, basically that one can discuss the moral and political and religious conflagrations of the day largely up in the didactic/pedantic intellectual clouds.

What amazes me and has always amazed me is the degree to which you show yourself captured by your own rhetoric. In this sentence you have established, a priori, that to think about things is to locate oneself in didactic/pedantic clouds. Your assertion is mind-bendingly stupid and yet you really seem to believe what you write. Moral and political and religious (theological) issues all involve and depend on structures of ideas. Indeed, you nut, philosophy itself is fully the territory that you denigrate.

See, there he goes! Proving my point!! And [of course] way, way, way, up in the clouds!!!

So what the fuck are you doing here dope!

Trying to bring what I construe to be the insufferable pedants like you and Satyr -- or, sure, Satyr and you -- down out of those clouds. Like, say, among others, historically, Lenin and Stalin and Hitler and Putin and Xi Jinping who managed to actually walk their own talk. Those who translated their own ideals [or lack thereof] into actual political polices.

Only with those like you and Satyr on a considerably smaller stage. Our own for example.

Instead, more of the same. Only in Stooge mode...

In order to arrive at clarity about why there is factionalism, division and social and civil strife, you have to be able to see into the sort of idea structures and *worldview* that each camp is operating from. But in this task you, Iambiguous, are useless. You are not capable of thinking things through. Your thinking is more emoting. And your *inimitable method* is to send up the most incredible walls of words that anyone posts on this forum where you rehearse day after day, month after month, year after year, the same neurotic and overblown nonsense.

What you require, possibly in addition to a good therapist, is to go yourself into those clouds and sort things out. Wonderful it would be if you'd have done this years back. But no your rehearsals are meant to be inflictions that all others must suffer!

Note to others:

Not to worry! He'll never "shame" me into going up there with him!!

My point is there are those who insist that, using the tools of philosophy, one can arrive at the optimal -- most rational -- frame of mind. Whereas I suggest that down through the ages there have always been "conflicting goods" being contended. And that these individual convictions are acquired far more from points of view derived existentially from the life that one lived out in a particular world historically and culturally. And, as well, in a world teeming with contingency, chance and change. And that the Benjamín Button Syndrome is entirely applicable to the is/ought world in turn.

Then this part:

After all, what can you really know about the life I've lived and how my own personal experiences predisposed me existentially to embody particular moral and political prejudices. About the same as what I can know about your life, your personal experiences, your moral and political prejudices rooted existentially in dasein.

Which, again, is why religions and philosophies are invented: to convince ourselves that, either God or No God, there is a font "out there" that allows us to anchor "I" in an overarching sense of meaning and purpose.

Again, go ahead and pick one:

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

And here you are with IC, henry and others basically mocking them for not thinking exactly as you do about all of this.

You all actually do believe that of all the One True Paths to Enlightenment that there were, are and will be, your own really is the optimal frame of mind!!!

And that above all else you need to agree that there is in fact the One True Path.

Here you rehearse a more or less typical projection of yours. It is true that systems of philosophy and schools of philosophy develop *camps of thought* to which one attaches oneself or one opposes and has issues with. And it is also true that it is natural that man try to establish an explication of *reality* that seems to concord or sum-up the nature of the *actuality*.

And, in my view, it is also true that many of the above on their very own "my way or the highway" One True Path to Enlightenment, insist that their own -- and only their own -- camp of thought must prevail. Only for some like you it never really becomes anything other than a "camp of thought".

Then back to Stooge mode:

Your mind has about 3 moving parts so that once you have (so brilliantly! so acutely!) noticed that different schools of thought and interpretation indeed exist, that there are *conflicting goods being contended*. Is this the conclusion of your Life Work? We will write it on your gravestone then:

"Here lies a man who noticed that conflicts exist. He was adamant that different perspectives depended on Dasein".

We might look for some poem where *a world teeming in contingency, chance and change* is movingly expressed and engrave it there too -- a general but a solemn epitaph. I am unsure how to reference Benjamin Button here but -- ok I've got it -- we will be sure to bring him up in the eulogy.

Note to others:

Again, this is his way of diverting attention from my points above regarding 1] the generally "arrogant, autocratic, authoritarian" nature of moral and political and religious objectivists and 2] the role that dasein plays in creating even their own convictions, to his point that this is really all about me instead.

Then, as with those like Satyr, he really starts to get worked up by the points I raise about him...

Has no one yet made it plain that you are operating within moronic limits? One year or so of you is quite enough!

Now, from my frame of mind, however, I have been making a considerably bigger fool out of you here than you have of me.

But, sure, others can decide for themselves who has [so far] "won".

OK, now back to the Philosophical and Existential Neurosis:

I'd asked you "If you are unsure don’t you think you need to become certain?"

And I responded:

On the contrary, that frame of mind no longer works for me. Why? Because I'm no less fractured and fragmented myself regarding them. Instead, I've managed to think myself into believing that in a No God world -- my own subjective rooted existentially in dasein assumption only -- an objectivist invents God or deontology or ideology or biological imperatives or one or another Ism, in order to comfort and console himself. How? By being able to anchor the Real Me in the Right Thing To Do.

Then back to these...

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

...guys and gals. They accomplished that too. Only it's their own One True Path and not yours.

I asked you, idiot, this direct question:

In what ways — I refer to things I’ve written on this forum — have you concluded my interactions with Blacks, women, homosexuals and Jews? Are you referring to the “pastiche person” of Satyr, Ecmandu, Alexis (and others?) or are you actually referring to me? This clarification is important.

And this is your response?!?

Look, we all know that when interacting with someone virtually, online, we never really know for sure who this person is. Or what their motivation and intention is.

I'm just asking you to explore your own views on blacks, women, homosexuals and Jews down out of the intellectual clouds. You are in a community interacting with them. You are in a position of power such that sustaining what you construe to be the "best of all possible communities" is within reach. Okay, there's how I imagine the Nazis here. Now, how would your community be different?

I am asking you to pull your head out of your asshole, jerk. You insinuate many things that you are unable to back up. If you want to discuss issues that pertain to race and the sorts of conflicts that exist in that realm, make it plain. If you have specific ideas in that domain, reveal them. If you are *conflicted & fragmented* in those areas then talk about that. But you do not do that. Instead you *project* and -- always! -- it reduces to Nazis and Nazism.

Now, notice how in posting this, you are able to completely evade plainly posting in regard to this...

I'm just asking you to explore your own views on blacks, women, homosexuals and Jews down out of the intellectual clouds. You are in a community interacting with them. You are in a position of power such that sustaining what you construe to be the "best of all possible communities" is within reach. Okay, there's how I imagine the Nazis here. Now, how would your community be different.

You should I think lay out what your views are since you seem to establish a polarity.

My views are drawn and quartered. I think different, ofttimes conflicting things about them at different times. I'm pulled and tugged ambivalently in opposite directions time and again given "here and now"/"there and then" assessments of genes and memes. I'll see this or read that today and think one thing. And then something else a week later. I'm just not sure anymore.

Are you a sexist? Are you a racist?

Yeah, in some ways I think I'm both. As a young man I was virulent racist and sexist and homophobe. Jews never really came up in my own white working class community. Now, I was once a staunch Marxist and an even stauncher feminist. But not anymore. Not even close. The arguments I fiercely rejected as an ideologue I'm more ambivalent about now. Like in noting to VT that I share many of her own complaints about transgenders. I'm considerably more conservative about things "here and now"...guns and capital punishment and animal rights. But mostly I'm still fractured and fragmented. Convinced that, as I suggest of everyone else, I came to acquire particular moral and political prejudices about the particular world around me. And that there is no deontological assessment available to "serious philosophers".

What the fuck is this?!?

You are in a position of power such that sustaining what you construe to be the "best of all possible communities" is within reach.

Talk about yourself, moron.

I did talk about myself in regard to race and gender and sexuality.

This is not a philosophy forum it is a mental neurotic's treatment center.

Note to others:

Tell me I'm not "getting to him".

Now, if he is Satyr, what he is displaying here is precisely the threatened mentality that Satyr himself encompassed at KT when he sent me to the Dungeon there. And then "disappeared" me altogether from the KT discussions.

The same sort of mentality such that, when I log in as a user at KT, I'm greeted with this:

You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum

But Satyr need not worry. I have no interest in exchanging posts with him anymore. He is beyond taking seriously given my own interest in philosophy these days.

And to the extent that I reduce AJ down to his level, I'll lose all interest in exchanging posts with him too. Well, other than in "entertainment mode".

But, still, that is no less just another subjective manifestation of my own frame of mind rooted existentially in dasein.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Note to the (Other) Others:

"God help us all..."

[iambiguous]

Note to the (Other) Others:

"God help us all..."

Thank the Lord for small favors: it's not a "wall of words" at least.

Next!

[Gary Childress]

Jesus walked among and healed the lowest common denominators of society, and went so far as to suggest that being a member of high society posed a disadvantage in getting into the kingdom of God (as a camel going through the eye of a needle). I can definitely see shades of the 60s hippy movement in that respect, people who were outcasts of "prim and proper" society being rebellious (as well as cynical) toward the desires of the elite. I imagine the initial reaction of the Romans sending Christians to the lions' arena in some ways paralleled the US government's response to the hippy movement (also the Civil Rights movement), using the National Guard and riot police when they refused to go along with what they were told. In some sense some things never really change, though people may be treated substantially better as society progresses than being thrown into the jaws of voracious predators.