Christianity

[Lacewing]

everything including all our stories converge to synthesis in ways mysterious and unknown to us at this time, all themes whether minute or great or simply expressing opposites, conjoining into a grand polyphony which reveals itself without error.

Nice

At the moment I'm reading Until the End of Time by Brian Greene who is, aside from his other talents, an outstanding writer.

This is a tiny quote from the beginning of the book...

...perhaps one day we will understand the workings of mind and matter so completely that all will be laid bare, from black holes to Beethoven, from quantum weirdness to Walt Whitman. But even without having anything remotely near that capacity, there is much to be gained by immersion in these stories - creative, scientific, imaginative....

I don't agree with all his conclusions, as expected, but it certainly activates one's neurons to consider alternatives and variations.

Yes!

Perhaps the constructs and limitations of human thought and perception will eventually be recognized as a magnificent backdrop for human experience. Whatever that purpose may be, or for no purpose at all, we can still explore and experience and play with/within its forms/illusions as artists or actors or storytellers.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Oy veh ist mir ….

Now I have to start making gem elixirs.

Then wheatgrass fasts and … colonics!

Perhaps the constructs and limitations of human thought and perception will eventually be recognized as a magnificent backdrop for human experience. Whatever that purpose may be, or for no purpose at all, we can still explore and experience and play with/within its forms/illusions as artists or actors or storytellers.

… as madmen, hired assassins, or just dancers with busy busy schedules. No limitations!

[Lacewing]

I’ve ordered some low thread-count tunics and some power-crystals on Amazon. Since I have Anazon Prime they arrive tomorrow! I’ll set to work immediately. I ain’t going backwards, I am riding the Winds of Change into Mankind’s future. Nothing and no one can stop me now!

No need to change your wardrobe and script, Alexis, unless or until you get tired of the glorious robes you wear and the monument you polish. Never mind that some of the discussions here do not support your obsession. There are lots of monument builders on Earth, crafting to honor their own likeness. That's one way to do this human experience.

[Lacewing]

Perhaps the constructs and limitations of human thought and perception will eventually be recognized as a magnificent backdrop for human experience. Whatever that purpose may be, or for no purpose at all, we can still explore and experience and play with/within its forms/illusions as artists or actors or storytellers.

… as madmen, hired assassins, or just dancers with busy busy schedules. No limitations!

What are the implications of all options available? What do you choose to do with/within that?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Never mind that some of the discussions here do not support your obsession.

Those obsessions have passed in a mad fever! I admit not being much adept at the Lingo of Enlightenment. But by and by I’ll soon trade fantastic paragraphs even with Dubious!

And as for Melville quotes!

Love sees ten million fathoms down, till dazzled by the floor of pearls. The eye is Love's own magic glass, where all things that are not of earth, glide in supernatural light. There are not so many fishes in the sea, as there are sweet images in lovers' eyes. In those miraculous translucencies swim the strange eye-fish with wings, that sometimes leap out, instinct with joy; moist fish-wings wet the lover's cheek. Love's eyes are holy things; therein the mysteries of life are lodged; looking in each other's eyes, lovers see the ultimate secret of the worlds; and with thrills eternally untranslatable, feel that Love is god of all. Man or woman who has never loved, nor once looked deep down into their own lover's eyes, they know not the sweetest and the loftiest religion of this earth. Love is both Creator's and Saviour's gospel to mankind; a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.

Herman Melville, Pierre or the Ambiguities

[Lacewing]

And as for Melville quotes!

Love sees ten million fathoms down, till dazzled by the floor of pearls. The eye is Love's own magic glass, where all things that are not of earth, glide in supernatural light. There are not so many fishes in the sea, as there are sweet images in lovers' eyes. In those miraculous translucencies swim the strange eye-fish with wings, that sometimes leap out, instinct with joy; moist fish-wings wet the lover's cheek. Love's eyes are holy things; therein the mysteries of life are lodged; looking in each other's eyes, lovers see the ultimate secret of the worlds; and with thrills eternally untranslatable, feel that Love is god of all. Man or woman who has never loved, nor once looked deep down into their own lover's eyes, they know not the sweetest and the loftiest religion of this earth. Love is both Creator's and Saviour's gospel to mankind; a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.

Herman Melville, Pierre or the Ambiguities

Now you're talking...

[iambiguous]

Religion is irrational, right?
Catholic Answers Staff

To know everything there is to know about modern science is beyond the capabilities of any one human being. This is why we have specialists. Yet, we don’t say that, because the totality of scientific knowledge is beyond the powers of one person to know, science is irrational.

Again, however, science is not advertizing itself as a font for moral Commandments or as the One True Path to immortality and salvation. And those specialists in the scientific community can reconfigure the laws of nature into, among other things, the mind-boggling technologies and engineering feats that would make our modern world virtually unrecognizable -- unimaginable -- to those who lived back when say, Jesus Christ was around?

Where is the equivalent of that in regard to bringing the Christian God any closer to us empirically, experientially, existentially. Instead, many Christians just continue to wait patiently for the Second Coming. The event that will result in untold millions being Left Behind...and damned for all of eternity.

In other words, the fact that a person is limited in what he can know doesn’t mean there isn’t something beyond that. If we move from an individual to the human race as a whole, we can say that the fact that there may be limits upon what man, as a finite creature can know, doesn’t mean there aren’t thing beyond what he can know.

Sure, in regard to God and religion, the man behind the curtain can still be worshipped and adored. But which one? Why your God and not one of the many, many, many others? It still comes down to a more or less blind leap of faith. And why, with so much at stake, would a loving, just and merciful God allow that to continue? It makes no sense since an omnipotent God could easily make His existence known to all mere mortals across the globe. Yet He does not. Instead, the various denominations are merely able to preach the Gospel that they happen to subscribe to.

Christianity claims to have a message from beyond man’s intellectual horizon. It claims God (whose existence, by the way, is knowable even with our finite reasoning abilities) has revealed things which are beyond reason, but which don’t conflict with it. It also claims that reality as we know it gives evidence, though not proof, that transcendental truths exist. Whether this is so or not, it’s not an irrational position.

Oh, indeed, Christians claim a lot of things. Not unlike these folks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

And I still challenge any of them to demonstrate how, with their own finite reason ability, they know that the Christian God does in fact exist. In part because I want to know that again too.

And, sure, there are any number of mind-boggling components of reality that might be seen as evidence of a Creator. I agree: it's not necessarily irrational. But with so much at stake on both sides of the grave where is the actual proof that it is the Christian God and not one of the other ones above. In Immanual Can's YouTube videos?

From the Christian perspective, the rationalist is like a man with a road map who, having found the map reliable in what is pictured, somehow concludes from this that only what is pictured is real. The rationalist thinks roads which go off the map go nowhere, but it’s really rationalism with its blind faith that’s a dead end.

No, most rationalists don't conclude that at all. Most rationalists will traverse the roads not pictured on the map to see what is actually there. So, what is the equivalent of that among Christians? Beyond the Christian Bible itself being the map, and beyond more or less blind leaps of faith, demonstrate to us that, say, Heaven is a real place.

[Harry Baird]

For me: bein' a free will, with all that entails, is the only criteria.

And what is it that that entails, in your opinion?

It would be wrong to brutally and mercilessly torture me becuz, as a free will, a person, I have a natural, inalienable, exclusive claim to my life, liberty, and property. It ain't about suffering.

[...]

It's wrong to thieve from and slaughter me becuz, as a free will, a person, I have a natural, inalienable, exclusive claim to my life, liberty, and property. It ain't about preferences.

A thought experiment:

An otherwise normal human being - that is, a human being with a normal body, brain, and mind, who experiences like other human beings do - is born without free will: a human being who lacks the capacity to freely choose. This human being has a gender like any other human being, but, to eliminate bias either way, for the purposes of the thought experiment, that gender is left unspecified, and we'll use a gender-neutral name for this human being: Sam.

Sam's lacking of free will entails that Sam is incapable of free choice, and, indeed, Sam makes no choices of Sam's own volition, instead simply performing whatever basic acts - e.g., chewing and swallowing food - those in whose care Sam is tell Sam to do. Otherwise, and by default, Sam simply remains immobile. Sam does, though, experience just like any other human being, finding some things pleasurable and some things unpleasurable. Sam is, then, capable of experiencing both joy and suffering. Too, although Sam is incapable of choosing or expressing it, Sam generally enjoys life and prefers to continue to live.

To preemptively thwart a potential diversion: those who care for Sam are very happy to do so and are not at all burdened by Sam.

Questions:

Is it morally permissible to brutally and mercilessly torture Sam given that Sam lacks free will and that it ain't about suffering?

Is it morally permissible to slaughter Sam even though Sam prefers to continue to live given that Sam lacks free will and that it ain't about preferences?

[henry quirk]

And what is it that that entails, in your opinion?

Yeah, I wanted to explore this when I asked what is a person? but you weren't interested. Now, I don't have the time (or the interest).

An otherwise normal human being - that is, a human being with a normal body, brain, and mind, who experiences like other human beings do - is born without free will:

Without free will (not being one) he's not a person: he's just meat. Was Sam always like this, or was he rendered impotent by accident or disease? If Sam is comatose (rendered impotent) then he was a free will who may be a free will once more. If he was born lacking a brain (not the source of mind but a necessary interface and constraint for mind) then he was never, and can never be, a free will, a person.

Sam does, though, experience just like any other human being

He doesn't. There's no one home, no one is in there. Sam's experience is like the chicken's: bio-mechanical. Again: is his condition an injury or is it congenital?

Sam is, then, capable of experiencing both joy and suffering.

No, he doesn't suffer or have joy. He has no mind, is not a mind, is not a free will, is not a person. Again: coma or lack or brain?

Sam generally enjoys life and prefers to continue to live.

He's empty: he has no preferences. Again...

Is it morally permissible to brutally and mercilessly torture Sam given that Sam lacks free will and that it ain't about suffering? Is it morally permissible to slaughter Sam even though Sam prefers to continue to live given that Sam lacks free will and that it ain't about preferences?

Morality is a function of personhood, Sam -- as you describe him -- is not a person, so: moral permissibility doesn't come into it.

Again: Was Sam always like this, or was he rendered impotent by accident or disease? If Sam is comatose (rendered impotent) then he was a free will who may be a free will once more. If he was born lacking a brain (not the source of mind but a necessary interface and constraint for mind) then he was never, and can never be, a free will, a person.

[henry quirk]

I’ve ordered some low thread-count tunics and some power-crystals on Amazon. Since I have Anazon Prime they arrive tomorrow! I’ll set to work immediately. I ain’t going backwards, I am riding the Winds of Change into Mankind’s future. Nothing and no one can stop me now!

Time travellin'? Here's what you'll find: on the ground, a cyberpunk world where the hermaphroditic normies all have VR equipment installed in their heads. Each perfectly distracted from noticing the leash on their necks and the boot on their faces.

It's a different story off the ground.

I suggest a vac suit instead of genderless tunics and mood crystals...you really wanna go up and out (where there's next to no law [but there are rules]).

[Harry Baird]

Yeah, I wanted to explore this when I asked what is a person? but you weren't interested.

You use terms in ways that I don't, so I didn't at the time even know what you meant by that question. I'd thought you meant "person" in some sort of legalistic sense, which seemed to me to be the wrong way to approach the issue.

Now, I don't have the time (or the interest).

I'll have to piece it together myself then. It seems that your position is that "being a person", "having a mind", and "having (or being a) free will" all mutually entail one another (and entail "being a moral agent", "being subject to moral judgement", and "having natural rights").

I surmise that this is because you start with the premise that any being with a mind necessarily has the capacity to use that mind freely to make free choices, and thus has free will - and, of course, the converse applies too: that any being with free will necessarily has a mind. Then, you define a "person" as a being with a mind (and thus with free will).

Presumably, that's why when I present to you a thought experiment premised on the existence of a human being with a mind but without free will, you implicitly reject that premise:

Sam is, then, capable of experiencing both joy and suffering.

No, he doesn't suffer or have joy. He has no mind, is not a mind, is not a free will, is not a person.

I can work with your premise that minds are necessarily free willing, and we presumably (hopefully?) otherwise share definitions of those terms, at least in context.

I can work with your definition of a person as a being with a mind (and thus with free will).

I can work with your premise that having a mind (and only having a mind) entails being a moral agent subject to moral judgement and having natural rights.

I can't work with your definitions of "feeling", "experience", "awareness", "sentience", and "consciousness", which are too broad, and include beings without minds.

Tentatively, it seems that we share definitions of "joy" and "suffering", and, given the above quote, it seems that just as you hold that "having a mind" entails "having free will", and vice versa, you also hold that both of those entail "capable of suffering and joy", and vice versa.

The crux of things can, then, I think, be phrased in terms we seem to share as:

You believe that non-human living beings (with perhaps some exceptions) do not have minds (and thus are incapable of either suffering or joy), and are mere automatons, and that is why you hold that they do not have natural rights. If you came to believe that non-human living beings actually do have minds, then you would hold that they do have natural rights. This would be the same as coming to believe that non-human living beings are capable of joy and suffering, since (it seems) you hold that only beings capable of joy and suffering have minds, and vice versa.

In an earlier post, I pointed out that non-human beings behave in ways that are explicable in one of only two ways: firstly, that they are capable of joy and suffering, or, secondly, that as robots they have been deliberately designed by your deist God - presumably as some sort of perverse trick - to mimic beings who are capable of joy and suffering.

On the first explanation, you are bound to accept that non-human living beings have natural rights, and that you are violating them by consuming their slaughtered bodies and the products otherwise stolen from them while they were deprived of their liberty and bodily integrity.

On the second explanation, you require some strong warrant to hold the belief that this is what God has done, especially given that if you are wrong about it, you are violating the natural rights of others. You haven't as yet explained what that warrant is.

Take your pick...

[iambiguous]

Believing in Christianity is Irrational
By John W. Loftus

Let's try this again folks. The evidence for Christianity is historical evidence from the ancient superstitious pre-scientific past. That's it. Private subjective experiences do not count, since all believers claim to have them. Miracle claims in today's world do not count either, since the evidence for them doesn't even convince believers in the same faith tradition, much less other faith traditions.

And again and again and again and again and again. As long as the Christian God is thought to be the only path to objective morality, immortality and salvation, there will almost certainly be millions and millions of men and women who figure out a way to believe in Him. I certainly would if I could.

Thus, articles like this will almost certainly [in turn] be but more preaching to the choir. And, sure, particular atheists in their own way can turn No God itself into another religion.

Still, aside from the accounts revolving around the historical existence of the Jews and [possibly] Jesus Christ, where is the evidence that the Christian God does exist?

Aside from, "read the Bible".

Same with personal experiences. Clearly, if someone claims to have had one with the Christian God and they genuinely believe it to be true, well, good for them. But until they can provide a way for others to have the same sort of experience, it's all just "in their head". And then the part where others have similar experiences...but with entirely different Gods.

Just think Pat Robertson, Benny Hinn, and Oral Roberts, or the many claims coming from Asia and the Southern Hemisphere which only convinces Pentecostals and Charismatics. The evidence does not convince many or even most evangelicals, much less moderates, even less so liberals.

Again, why is that? We're usually talking about an omnipotent God here. And that is certainly how most describe the Christian God. How hard could it be for Him to make His own existence indisputable? I'm sure any number of Christians have fantasized about just that. The look on the faces of these guys -- https://superscholar.org/features/influential-atheists/ -- when Jesus Christ really does return. In fact, I still recall a cartoon in a magazine around the time Madalyn Murray O'Hair died. She's in Hell and the caption reads, "Well, I'll be damned!"

And then, of course this part...

The evidence for them certainty doesn't convince people outside one's own faith tradition. Protestants don't accept the Catholic miracle claims at Lourdes, France, at the hands of the Virgin Mary, while Christians don't accept the Hindu claims of being healed in the Ganges river.

And on and on and on. Both between denominations and within denominations.

And, then, the stuff we bump into within the philosophy community: The Christian God defined and deduced into existence up in the intellectual/spiritual contraption clouds:

Philosophical apologetics isn't evidence at all. This is merely argumentation that should be based on solid objective evidence or discarded as special pleading, as I have argued in some detail right here.

Call it, say, the Alexis Jacobi Syndrome. Though with him and folks like phyllo, I still don't understand how they do connect the dots between words and worlds pertaining to God and religion.

For a Christian to say, "okay, but these kinds of things are still evidence for me," is quite plainly irrational. There is no such thing as privately convincing evidence. Evidence, if it's to be considered as such, is objective evidence, public evidence, evidence that can convince other rational people.

On the contrary, the human condition is such that this is all that is needed to make something true. You simply believe that it is. And if you doubt that just look at human history to date. All of the ghastly things that people actually did because of what they believed was true in their heads.

[iambiguous]

Okay, IC, the third video...

https://youtu.be/FPCzEP0oD7I

"Leibniz’ Contingency Argument"

The important point here in my view is that this is an argument for the existence of a God, the God. And it does not provide any evidence at all that this God, if He does exist, is the Christian God.

Also, unlike some atheists who religiously insist "God does not exist!" [as though they could possibly know this ontologically], I readily acknowledge that God is in fact one possible [if not plausible] explanation for the existence of existence itself.

Basically, the narrator takes all of us up into the intellectual/metaphysical clouds. He asks, "why does anything at all exist?" Yes, I agree, that is a very good question. Then he notes that Gottfried Leibniz concludes that the "logical explanation" is God. Whereas others argue that existence just is what it is...no need for an explanation. Also, the part where a child could ask for an explanation for the existence of God Himself.

But then the discussion shifts way, way, way up into the philosophical/spiritual clouds. Points pertaining to speculations revolving around the distinction between "things that exist necessarily" and "things that exist contingently". And [of course] the part where since the universe does exist that must be contingent upon a non-contingent God creating it.

But: is this reasonable, we are asked?

Of course it is: "It follows that if the universe has a cause of its existence, that cause cannot be part of the universe -- it must be non-physical and immaterial-- beyond space and time".

God of course. And, as luck would have it for mere mortals, merely being able to think this up is all that apparently is necessary to make it true.

Thus, if someone taps IC on the shoulder and asks him for actual demonstrable proof that it is the Christian path to immortality and Salvation here and not one of these paths -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions -- well, that must be on another video.

Again, in my opinion, this argument is all just "thought up" in someone's head. There is absolutely no substantive proof of it.


Anything to add, IC?

[henry quirk]

I pointed out that non-human beings behave in ways that are explicable in one of only two ways: firstly, that they are capable of joy and suffering, or, secondly, that as robots they have been deliberately designed by your deist God - presumably as some sort of perverse trick - to mimic beings who are capable of joy and suffering.

The third option (#3), of course, is when you or AJ or Dubious see animals joyous or suffering you guys are anthropomorphizing (projecting).

Take your pick...

#3

[iambiguous]

Is Faith Irrational?
by SHANE ROSENTHAL on November 22, 2022 | 3 Comments

Some years ago on one of his broadcasts, Bill Maher defined faith as “the purposeful suspension of critical thinking.” Similarly, Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson and others have defined faith as “believing something in the absence of evidence. But are these definitions of faith accurate?

More to the point [mine] how do definitions taken out of your dictionary and intertwined in the lives that you live out in the world among others...given contexts that involve things like God and religion...fare given, in turn, what might be conflicting definitions by others? Or given conflicting assessments of the circumstances themselves?

Suspension of critical thinking about what in particular? Believing in what in particular based on what particular collection of evidence?

In preparation for a lecture I recently gave on this topic, I decided to check the world’s foremost authoritative source for all things pertaining to the English language, namely, the Oxford English Dictionary. Featuring 20 volumes and over 21,000 pages of content, the OED is not the typical dictionary you are likely to find in an average household. But thankfully, it is now accessible through an online subscription, so I created my own account, and began investigating the true meaning of the English word “faith.”

I don't care if the world's most authoritative dictionary devotes an entire volume to the word "faith" itself, many of us as individuals will still define it in accordance with what we want and need it to mean in order to sustain our own faith in God. And that, after all, is "for all practical purposes" what comforts and consoles us in a world bursting at the seams with trials and tribulations, and a death that ushers in oblivion.

The "definitionists" among us are, in my view, those who encompass God and religion in a world of words. Reality then comes to revolve around the arguments themselves...the spiritual assessments they make about that world that most comfort and console them. Words and worlds. Around and around they go.