Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

...many different ways...
[Nothing from IC here]

Not interesting. Not even intellectually challenging. All it said was, "Many people think wrong things." And? Nothing follows from that. So there's nothing to answer.

Adrian Jervis at bethinking: Dawkins misrepresents revelation. Christian revelation isn't a subjective and true-for-me personal experience or feeling. Revelation is actually the idea that God, who is above culture and language, has chosen to disclose or reveal himself. If God is there, it is not unreasonable to believe that he can communicate clearly when he wants to.

That's actually a very reasonable objection. Just try to reverse it, and you'll see how inevitably true it has to be.

Let's try the alternative: "The Supreme Being exists, but cannot speak."

That's absurd. How could a Being be "the Supreme Being," and exist as such, and yet be unable to speak? That doesn't sound very "supreme." After all, speaking is something so easy that every human being can do it. So even if you don't believe God HAS spoken, you'd at least have to concede, as matter of basic rationality, that IF He existed, He would HAVE to be able to speak. Any other thought is self-contradictory nonsense, obviously.[/i]

Chuckle, chuckle...

It's bullshit. You claim that the Christian God does exist.

Don't chuckle too fast. Look again. You didn't read.

What I claimed is simply that IF one chooses to accept that the Supreme Being exists, one is simultaneously committed to believe He can speak. If you don't, you've just said, "The Supreme Being (who exists) is not supreme." And that makes no sense to say.

So sure, you can go on and say, "Well, I don't believe the Supreme Being exists." And then you also believe, obviously, that He doesn't speak; because non-existent entities don't speak. But if you say, "I think there is a Supreme Being," then you have to assume He can speak. Nothing else is rational to suppose.

That's the point. The speaker is assuming God exists. Therefore, there is nothing at all strange about him saying the same Being can speak.

[iambiguous]

Don't chuckle too fast. Look again. You didn't read.

What I claimed is simply that IF one chooses to accept that the Supreme Being exists, one is simultaneously committed to believe He can speak. If you don't, you've just said, "The Supreme Being (who exists) is not supreme." And that makes no sense to say.

So sure, you can go on and say, "Well, I don't believe the Supreme Being exists." And then you also believe, obviously, that He doesn't speak; because non-existent entities don't speak. But if you say, "I think there is a Supreme Being," then you have to assume He can speak. Nothing else is rational to suppose.

That's the point. The speaker is assuming God exists. Therefore, there is nothing at all strange about him saying the same Being can speak.

The only interest I now have in discussing Christianity with you revolves around your willingness to address my points here:

You claim that the Christian God does exist. That you can prove it beyond a leap of faith. Then you refuse to explore those YouTube videos with me here on this thread. Then you shrug that off as though it is a ridiculous proposal even through such proof might possibly save the souls of non-Christians here. Including your friends at PN who are not now Christians.

Come on, IC, your God being omnipotent could speak at anytime such that there would be absolutely no doubt whatsoever of His existence. Instead, His flock fall back on "read the Bible". And even the Bible itself could contain that indisputable proof...but does not. Otherwise, why would all of these True Believers -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions -- still be around preaching their own Gospels?!

Those that, in regard to the one true God [theirs], see you as the Atheist!!!

Again, either you have completely deluded yourself regarding those videos or you are afflicted with a "condition". Why on earth would anyone actually take you seriously when you refuse to provide the proof you claim does in fact exist beyond the Bible or a leap of faith?

How can you not be a complete disgrace to Christianity -- a religion that proselytizes -- in refusing to save souls? Instead, you're in here engaging those like AJ and others up in the spiritual contraption clouds.

Instead of noting segments of those videos that would demonstrate why we should accept Bible verses as the word of the one true existing God, you simply go back to the Bible. Around and around and around you go. The Bible says so...so it must be true. Why? Because the bible is the word of God!

Sure, that circular logic works in Sunday School with the kiddies. But this is a philosophy forum. Only the leap of faith folks here will accept that as all the proof they need.

Otherwise, stick with those like AJ who will play your spiritual contraption word games.

[Immanuel Can]

The only interest I now have in discussing Christianity with you revolves around your willingness to address my points here:

And yet, I don't find any of it interesting or intellectually challenging, having dealt with all of it, many times, with others before you. It's simplistic, basic and, frankly, boringly shallow. Some of it's barely coherent, and it's punctuated with gratuitious sneers. I find nothing witty, daring or insightful in the whole sorry mess, and would rather spend my time on smarter things.

So we're at an impasse on that.

Carry on as you are, I guess.

[iambiguous]

Iambiguous quotes someone, somewhere: So how can a thoughtful person believe in Christianity, since its basis is so 'irrational'?

On the other hand, as a child it's not like you are going to believe that what Mom and Pop are telling you about the world you live in is irrational. No, for literally thousands of days as "a kid", you are going to be bombarded with information about the world that of course you accept as entirely true. And that certainly includes what you are told about Christianity. Let's face it, if you had literally thousands of days to indoctrinate an impressionable mind, how deep down do you suppose you could instill a faith in a God, the God, your God?

First, one thing we must acknowledge is that those of us here on this thread, we are no longer capable of following, understanding, and believing in the Story that was once, and for many still is, sufficient enough and upon which a genuine, operational religious faith can be constructed.

For us, at least on one hand, part of our problem is that we cannot explain those believers. In fact (and I refer to Grump #5 our own Dubious as an example) those who *believe* in what he is incapable of believing are derided as imbeciles of the very first order.

Extreme Neurotic #28, our own Iambiguous, is a case worthy of study because, once upon a time he was an American Nazi Racist Christian, but was purified in the fires of war (among other things) and then went through various phases and from one chrysalis to another and then, finally, was extruded out as a bona fide intellectual neurotic as a Moral Nihilist. However! he still wishes to recover his former beliefs if only someone could come along and weave him a convincing enough tale to which he could attach himself in genuine & authentic belief.

Meantime he has a lot of links that you are going to have to answer for!

I think then that we can actually locate the *source*, shall we say, of the problem we confront, and which we cannot surmount, when faced with the issue of religious story and religious mythology. Simply put when we deal in religious terms we are dealing in those terms Richard Weaver described as "our metaphysical dream of the world". We know, or we believe we know, and are certain, that because there are different dream-versions, that no one of them is precise and accurate as a world-description.

But here we confront another issue: the intrusion of science-based truth into our way of conceiving and perceiving what is real and fact of this sort as the only *real facts* that we believe to have validity.

What we do not seem to realize fully is that the science-based perceptual system actually undermines everything that we have determined, in the most *human* sense imaginable, to have *value* and *meaning* in our world. The science-based perception-system thus acts as a terrible (and I would also say terrifying) reductive system of perception. Name one thing of value -- truth, justice, higher meanings, love -- and the science-view reduces these to mechanics. And when reduced to mechanics they are made to seem valueless in any former sense.

We fail, in fact, to take the science-material view to its absolute conclusion, and most of us remain in a sort of nether-world or a shadow-world where the old sustaining meanings still hover over us like ghostly presences, but with a mere whiff blow away into the irreal and the insubstantial.

For this reason, now, we are right on the verge of the consequences of our new perceptual order, and the mechanics that rise from it, of becoming more powerful than we have even been, and of asserting themselves over and against that fragile human creature who is fading away. Man-invented mechanical systems are predicted to become the new Lords of Non-meaning and all that is *human* will come under the control of mechanical-computer agency.

A new diabolism has been born and it does far more than shuffle along. It organizes itself into acute systems of management and control. By diabolic I mean not so much something deliberately geared to choose *evil* out of the sort of joy that Iago felt, but simply what results from mechanism having been created and set in motion.

Now, where does the *thoughtful person* stand when and if he can actually begin to see what is taking shape? Man is being reconfigured, that much is plain, but perhaps we have doubts about this or see it in a *positive* light? But the question, then, is actually Why is it that some do not see this in a *positive light*? Why the dystopian dreams which seemed to have mirrored the prophetic method of anticipating what comes next?

With what and through what -- again let me mention metaphysical dream -- will the thinking man construct protections? How can the human, in that sense of achieved meaning and value, fare against an exponentially powerful machinery of the sort I allude to and say is forming? Remember, that machine operates on the real plane of physical control, but man's domain is, overall, one that encompasses and proceeds out of the metaphysical.

Now, to *believe in* a source that one indeed believes to be Real and to be ultimately Determinant, is actually not a stupid idea by any means. It is not a stupid activity (for a man) either. It is however one laded with myriad problems.

The picture of religion, the child's picture that Iambiguous makes reference to, has collapsed. How can we not face this? But what is alluded to in all of that -- none of that has been wiped away nor will it ever be wiped away as long as the human exists qua human. Because it seems to me that as mechanical contraptions intrude more and more deeply and include what seems to be a merger of machine with man, we will in fact have no alternative refuge except in the realm of high metaphysics.

One other thing. If there is a high metaphysics there is also a low metaphysics. And the fact is that the lower metaphysics I define is composed of those detestable believers we hold in such contempt. Note here Dubious' own burning and acidic contempt for such an idiot who sees, and understands, that what makes man man is Logos and that if God is anything at all it is the origin-point of Logos.

Note to others:

Another hopelessly pedantic wall of words from him.

Look, my interest in discussing God and religion revolves primarily around the reason that God and religion exist in the first place: to connect the dots existentially between morality here and now and immortality and salvation there and then.

Does AJ address this in his wall of words above...or elsewhere? If so, I'd appreciate someone bringing it to my attention. Otherwise, sure, there's a place for those things that interest him here in regard to Christianity. Let him pursue that with others, however.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Note To The Others

I mean, the other others and not the normal run-of-the-mill others. Those others need not pay attention here but I certainly what the Others I refer to to listen and . . .

. . . oh shit I forgot what I was going to say.

Must not have been important!

[iambiguous]

The only interest I now have in discussing Christianity with you revolves around your willingness to address my points here:

And yet, I don't find any of it interesting or intellectually challenging, having dealt with all of it, many times, with others before you. It's simplistic, basic and, frankly, boringly shallow. Some of it's barely coherent, and it's punctuated with gratuitious sneers. I find nothing witty, daring or insightful in the whole sorry mess, and would rather spend my time on smarter things.

So we're at an impasse on that.

Carry on as you are, I guess.

Fine. You stick with that, and I'll stick with this:

How can you not be a complete disgrace to Christianity -- a religion that proselytizes -- in refusing to save souls?

A man who can save souls with precisely the sort of proof mere mortals long for, but who refuses to note those most powerful video segments that convinced him that one can choose Christianity beyond a leap of faith or a wager.

Does it get anymore pathetic?

[iambiguous]

Note To The Others

I mean, the other others and not the normal run-of-the-mill others. Those others need not pay attention here but I certainly what the Others I refer to to listen and . . .

. . . oh shit I forgot what I was going to say.

Must not have been important!

A ponderous pedant being...excruciatingly clever?

[Immanuel Can]

The only interest I now have in discussing Christianity with you revolves around your willingness to address my points here:

And yet, I don't find any of it interesting or intellectually challenging, having dealt with all of it, many times, with others before you. It's simplistic, basic and, frankly, boringly shallow. Some of it's barely coherent, and it's punctuated with gratuitious sneers. I find nothing witty, daring or insightful in the whole sorry mess, and would rather spend my time on smarter things.

So we're at an impasse on that.

Carry on as you are, I guess.

Fine. You stick with that, and I'll stick with this:

Yes, I thought you would. You're about as original and unpredictable as a streetcar. And like them, at the end of the day, you just go around in circles.

I'm getting off the ride at this stop.

[Alexis Jacobi]

AJ wrote: Here, Immanuel lacks understanding and consciousness that God in the very early days of Semitic history was never conceived of as a 'transcendental' and universal spirit.

Not at all. I'm well aware that the Gnostic and Eastern views of "the Supreme Being" are of this big, unknowable blank. The Gnostics call this "the Abyss," for obvious reasons. Let's take that suggestion seriously, though it's hard to do so, for reasons that will become clear, I think.

Your *hearing* is often *mishearing* and it is this I find most interesting in the weird communication that goes on between you and I and you and many others.

To say that the Hebrew (or Semitic) concept of god began as a clan protector and then, over time, was transformed into a Universal and a transcendental god-entity with a plan for the who world, and with a claim of ownership of the world, and indeed ownership of Destiny itself -- it is that which I focus on. I do that for intelligible reasons though. So that we can understand the god-concept which is not the same as god itself (whatever the heck that is, or may be, and even isn't).

My critique of your religious construct (an Evangelical Christian construct) is to attempt to see into its *function*. That idea fits in with what many on this thread feel obligated to do: see a religious structure in terms of what it does for those who hold to it. You have *absolutist* belief in the veracity of your construct and, naturally, cannot bend either your view or the Structure itself to see things in any other way. And seeing that, and seeing as well that this Construct has significantly collapsed (to become unbelievable for everyone writing on this forum except you), I describe what I do as a manoeuvre: a way to try to get to the essence of what is communicated by a *metaphysical dream* and to conserve, if possible, what is valuable in it.

You wish to assert that God can *talk* -- a booming voice that resounds from the nada, or from a luminous cloud, and a earth-shaking voice that causes trembling in the one *hearing*. This trope is, naturally, one that is so very Hebrew. Meaning, it fits with a concept-structure of a terrifying Authority that lays down the law and is capable, when it chooses, of laying low one who does not hear in that way, or hears some other frequency, or in refractory manner. You will say, naturally, that such hearing hears the gods of the Heathen and the Pagan, and that fits in with the Power Dynamic which is so central to Hebraicism generally and certainly has been, and still is, crucial to the Christian concept.

You are incapable, for all that you have ears, to conceive of how other men, in other times and places, understand divine communication to take place. It is simply unintelligible to you. Or an impossibility. And this too -- your insistences, your non-negotiable assertions -- is also interesting to me.

The problem is still the same: if the assumption is that the Supreme Being (whatever one conceives it to be) simply cannot do something so ordinary as to communicate, something so many of its alleged creatures so easily do, then it's nonsense ot speak of that entity, whatever it is, as "supreme."

The Supreme Being simply does not speak in the way that you seem to believe, or must believe, that it can. If it would or could speak in that way it was be like a voice of a giant loud-speaker that is heard by all people, everywhere. So, there are a great many things that one can say, and with great certainty, about how this *God* that you define does not communicate. Could that god conceivably speak as a giant voice like unto many waters for all men to hear, right here and now? Sure, within the realm of projected possibility.

So, the entire idea you work with means that if god spoke, he spoke through the sort of Voice that the Prophets heard: subjectively. The what is the medium of this divine voice? Man's mystic subjectivity.

So the "transcendency" set would have to argue that the Supreme Being CAN speak, but for some reason, chooses not to. And that simply raises the question of how and why they assume the Supreme Being chooses not to do so -- and why we should believe they know that, since they claim the Supreme Being didn't tell them that.

You reveal here the extent and depth of the *muddle* you are in. By insisting on a strange form of impossible realism you succeed only in alienating those who are subject to your preaching from the capability of *believing in* what you say is believable and to be believed in.

You are atheism's worthy industrious helper! You have likely brought people over the edge from a vague *shadow-belief* straight into the camp of overt Atheism. And that is what interests me about your position! In a sense I might say that you are in league with atheism or that you are part-and-parcel of the same intellectual necessity.

Intellectual necessity being being what results when a person simply cannot believe what he is supposed to believe for the belief-system to function. What happens then? Belief collapses.

So then, in order to understand another aspect of Modernity, we need to consider what occurs in certain minds, who cannot any longer believe the child's stories but who do not, at least totally, abandon the message or the meaning in the Stories. Aldous Huxley is a good example. After being, shall we say, expulsed from a conventional Christian belief (which had become unbelievable) he did look into a find value in the Perennial Philosophy:

“The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances) susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being. This Absolute is the God-without-form of Hindu and Christian mystical phraseology. The last end of man, the ultimate reason for human existence, is unitive knowledge of the divine Ground—the knowledge that can come only to those who are prepared to “Die to self” and so make room, as it were, for God.”

“Nothing in our everyday experience gives us any reason for supposing that water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen; and yet when we subject water to to certain rather drastic treatments, the nature of its constituent elements becomes manifest. Similarly, nothing in our everyday experience gives us much reason for supposing that the mind of the average sensual man has, as one of its constituents, something resembling, or identical with, the Reality substantial to the manifold world; and yet, when that mind is subjected to certain rather drastic treatments, the divine element, of which it is in part at least composed, becomes manifest, not only to the mind itself, but also, by its reflection in external behaviour, to other minds.”

These ideas -- also a definite kind of intellectual *manoeuvre* -- can only be anathema to your perspective. At the same time they are also seen by hard-core atheists as false-manoeuvres to recover or hold to a god-concept that, they feel, should be eliminated.

But in my view they seem to me attempts to locate what in fact we are actually talking about and what, if anything at all, is actually there at the core of a metaphysical dream.

[Immanuel Can]

The problem is still the same: if the assumption is that the Supreme Being (whatever one conceives it to be) simply cannot do something so ordinary as to communicate, something so many of its alleged creatures so easily do, then it's nonsense ot speak of that entity, whatever it is, as "supreme."

The Supreme Being simply does not speak in the way that you seem to believe...

Wait. How do you know that?

You say that the Supreme Being doesn't speak. What's your source of that information?

Try to answer the question you're asked, this time, if you would. The lengthy screeds are getting very tedious, and nobody really bothers with them much.

[iambiguous]

And yet, I don't find any of it interesting or intellectually challenging, having dealt with all of it, many times, with others before you. It's simplistic, basic and, frankly, boringly shallow. Some of it's barely coherent, and it's punctuated with gratuitious sneers. I find nothing witty, daring or insightful in the whole sorry mess, and would rather spend my time on smarter things.

So we're at an impasse on that.

Carry on as you are, I guess.

Fine. You stick with that, and I'll stick with this:

Yes, I thought you would. You're about as original and unpredictable as a streetcar. And like them, at the end of the day, you just go around in circles.

I'm getting off the ride at this stop.

Yes, he actually chose to submit this post...on purpose.

On the other hand, so did I:

How can he not be a complete disgrace to Christianity -- a religion that proselytizes -- in refusing to save souls?

A man who can save souls with precisely the sort of proof mere mortals long for, but who refuses to note the most powerful video segments that convinced him that one can choose Christianity beyond a leap of faith or a wager.

This is what he can't escape. The fact that he himself knows that those videos are just another, "need proof that the Chirstian God exists? Then read the Christian Bible!!!" tautology.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Try to answer the question you're asked, this time, if you would. The lengthy screeds are getting very tedious, and nobody really bothers with them much.

Oh no, everyone does. My screeds as you call them (harumph!) have quite literally transformed a number of people at a fundamental, energetic level.

You, my dear Immanuel, have lost the right to ask questions, make demands, direct conversations -- but Good Lord man I have already explained this to you!

[iambiguous]

AJ wrote: Here, Immanuel lacks understanding and consciousness that God in the very early days of Semitic history was never conceived of as a 'transcendental' and universal spirit.

Not at all. I'm well aware that the Gnostic and Eastern views of "the Supreme Being" are of this big, unknowable blank. The Gnostics call this "the Abyss," for obvious reasons. Let's take that suggestion seriously, though it's hard to do so, for reasons that will become clear, I think.

Your *hearing* is often *mishearing* and it is this I find most interesting in the weird communication that goes on between you and I and you and many others.

To say that the Hebrew (or Semitic) concept of god began as a clan protector and then, over time, was transformed into a Universal and a transcendental god-entity with a plan for the who world, and with a claim of ownership of the world, and indeed ownership of Destiny itself -- it is that which I focus on. I do that for intelligible reasons though. So that we can understand the god-concept which is not the same as god itself (whatever the heck that is, or may be, and even isn't).

My critique of your religious construct (an Evangelical Christian construct) is to attempt to see into its *function*. That idea fits in with what many on this thread feel obligated to do: see a religious structure in terms of what it does for those who hold to it. You have *absolutist* belief in the veracity of your construct and, naturally, cannot bend either your view or the Structure itself to see things in any other way. And seeing that, and seeing as well that this Construct has significantly collapsed (to become unbelievable for everyone writing on this forum except you), I describe what I do as a manoeuvre: a way to try to get to the essence of what is communicated by a *metaphysical dream* and to conserve, if possible, what is valuable in it.

You wish to assert that God can *talk* -- a booming voice that resounds from the nada, or from a luminous cloud, and a earth-shaking voice that causes trembling in the one *hearing*. This trope is, naturally, one that is so very Hebrew. Meaning, it fits with a concept-structure of a terrifying Authority that lays down the law and is capable, when it chooses, of laying low one who does not hear in that way, or hears some other frequency, or in refractory manner. You will say, naturally, that such hearing hears the gods of the Heathen and the Pagan, and that fits in with the Power Dynamic which is so central to Hebraicism generally and certainly has been, and still is, crucial to the Christian concept.

You are incapable, for all that you have ears, to conceive of how other men, in other times and places, understand divine communication to take place. It is simply unintelligible to you. Or an impossibility. And this too -- your insistences, your non-negotiable assertions -- is also interesting to me.

The problem is still the same: if the assumption is that the Supreme Being (whatever one conceives it to be) simply cannot do something so ordinary as to communicate, something so many of its alleged creatures so easily do, then it's nonsense ot speak of that entity, whatever it is, as "supreme."

The Supreme Being simply does not speak in the way that you seem to believe, or must believe, that it can. If it would or could speak in that way it was be like a voice of a giant loud-speaker that is heard by all people, everywhere. So, there are a great many things that one can say, and with great certainty, about how this *God* that you define does not communicate. Could that god conceivably speak as a giant voice like unto many waters for all men to hear, right here and now? Sure, within the realm of projected possibility.

So, the entire idea you work with means that if god spoke, he spoke through the sort of Voice that the Prophets heard: subjectively. The what is the medium of this divine voice? Man's mystic subjectivity.

So the "transcendency" set would have to argue that the Supreme Being CAN speak, but for some reason, chooses not to. And that simply raises the question of how and why they assume the Supreme Being chooses not to do so -- and why we should believe they know that, since they claim the Supreme Being didn't tell them that.

You reveal here the extent and depth of the *muddle* you are in. By insisting on a strange form of impossible realism you succeed only in alienating those who are subject to your preaching from the capability of *believing in* what you say is believable and to be believed in.

You are atheism's worthy industrious helper! You have likely brought people over the edge from a vague *shadow-belief* straight into the camp of overt Atheism. And that is what interests me about your position! In a sense I might say that you are in league with atheism or that you are part-and-parcel of the same intellectual necessity.

Intellectual necessity being being what results when a person simply cannot believe what he is supposed to believe for the belief-system to function. What happens then? Belief collapses.

So then, in order to understand another aspect of Modernity, we need to consider what occurs in certain minds, who cannot any longer believe the child's stories but who do not, at least totally, abandon the message or the meaning in the Stories. Aldous Huxley is a good example. After being, shall we say, expulsed from a conventional Christian belief (which had become unbelievable) he did look into a find value in the Perennial Philosophy:

“The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances) susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being. This Absolute is the God-without-form of Hindu and Christian mystical phraseology. The last end of man, the ultimate reason for human existence, is unitive knowledge of the divine Ground—the knowledge that can come only to those who are prepared to “Die to self” and so make room, as it were, for God.”

“Nothing in our everyday experience gives us any reason for supposing that water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen; and yet when we subject water to to certain rather drastic treatments, the nature of its constituent elements becomes manifest. Similarly, nothing in our everyday experience gives us much reason for supposing that the mind of the average sensual man has, as one of its constituents, something resembling, or identical with, the Reality substantial to the manifold world; and yet, when that mind is subjected to certain rather drastic treatments, the divine element, of which it is in part at least composed, becomes manifest, not only to the mind itself, but also, by its reflection in external behaviour, to other minds.”

These ideas -- also a definite kind of intellectual *manoeuvre* -- can only be anathema to your perspective. At the same time they are also seen by hard-core atheists as false-manoeuvres to recover or hold to a god-concept that, they feel, should be eliminated.

But in my view they seem to me attempts to locate what in fact we are actually talking about and what, if anything at all, is actually there at the core of a metaphysical dream.

Got all that? You better. Why? Because, come Judgment Day, it's on the test!

[Immanuel Can]

This is what he can't escape. The fact that he himself knows that those videos are just another, "need proof that the Chirstian God exists? Then read the Christian Bible!!!" tautology.

The silliest question, posed by a person who doesn't accept evidence and worded with false assumptions about faith, and his assumption is that I can't "escape" it?

Bad news for you: the most basic, basic apologetics site will dispatch your "brilliant" question immediately. I need not bother. And no, things don't get smarter if you make them BIGGER. They just read like lunatic screaming.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Got all that? You better. Why? Because, come Judgment Day, it's on the test!

Interesting that you bring this up! I have just updated the 20th through the 22nd chapters of the Email Course and there I deal directly on *Judgment Day*.

What acuasal connecting principle is working here?!