Christianity

[Martin Peter Clarke]

There is only one neural network for dis/belief. For me the question is how unwarranted, unjustified, untrue belief is the only landscape of belief for the majority, how ignorance pre-empts knowledge, prevents knowledge - warranted, justified, true belief - formation, in the vast majority of believers. It's rare that rationality can overcome disordered passion. As Hume knew right well. Furthermore

Spinoza’s conjecture: belief comes quickly and naturally, skepticism is slow and unnatural, and most people have a low tolerance for ambiguity

distilled by Michael Shermer from Sam Harris,

‘Several psychological studies appear to support [seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Baruch] Spinoza’s conjecture that the mere comprehension of a statement entails the tacit acceptance of its being true, whereas disbelief requires a subsequent process of rejection,’ Harris and his collaborators of the study reported. ‘Understanding a proposition may be analogous to perceiving an object in physical space: We seem to accept appearances as reality until they prove otherwise.’ Thus, subjects assessed true statements as believable faster than they judged false statements as unbelievable or uncertain statements as undecidable. Further, because the brain appears to process false or uncertain statements in regions linked to pain and disgust, especially in judging tastes and odors, this study gives new meaning to the phrase that a claim has passed the ‘taste test’ or the ‘smell test.’38 When you hear bullshit, you may know it by its smell.

THE BELIEVING BRAIN p 159

[Martin Peter Clarke]

God punishes us all for the mistake of 2 people. What a lovely God. Then floods the world killing almost everyone. Tells his chosen people to commit genocide. I'm sure it's all factual.

How particular. No wonder we need the scandal of it for it. The only way to divest oneself of this sick madness is to Foe the source.

It's not the only way. You could treat each narrative as a pericope, a cut-around, and 'like,' as in tick ,only those stories that help you and your children. You seem to be a free spirit.
This how you evaluate other literature.

I don't Foe texts, juts[... just] believers trapped in loops by them. Here. Separation is mandatory. Add foe. We can then be analytical where they cannot be.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

How interesting: I couln’t have put it better myself.

The only way to get rid of the knowledge of God is to make a foe of Him. And people wonder how anybody ends up in an eternity without God….

They choose it. C.S. Lewis was right. Everybody who is lost has chosen to be lost.

No, everyone who is lost is a victim of circumstances. Any man can be misled by a clever exploiter . If a man does not know that danger then good people should tell him of it, for his own safety and the safety of others.

For instance, think of the millions of Germans who were exploited by Hitler and his Nazis. The German people who said after 1945 ,that they did not know what was going on chose not to know because at the time they were deliberately misled.

There is always cause for men to choose what they choose.

Belief is easier than disbelief.

[Belinda]

There is only one neural network for dis/belief. For me the question is how unwarranted, unjustified, untrue belief is the only landscape of belief for the majority, how ignorance pre-empts knowledge, prevents knowledge - warranted, justified, true belief - formation, in the vast majority of believers. It's rare that rationality can overcome disordered passion. As Hume knew right well. Furthermore

Spinoza’s conjecture: belief comes quickly and naturally, skepticism is slow and unnatural, and most people have a low tolerance for ambiguity

distilled by Michael Shermer from Sam Harris,

‘Several psychological studies appear to support [seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Baruch] Spinoza’s conjecture that the mere comprehension of a statement entails the tacit acceptance of its being true, whereas disbelief requires a subsequent process of rejection,’ Harris and his collaborators of the study reported. ‘Understanding a proposition may be analogous to perceiving an object in physical space: We seem to accept appearances as reality until they prove otherwise.’ Thus, subjects assessed true statements as believable faster than they judged false statements as unbelievable or uncertain statements as undecidable. Further, because the brain appears to process false or uncertain statements in regions linked to pain and disgust, especially in judging tastes and odors, this study gives new meaning to the phrase that a claim has passed the ‘taste test’ or the ‘smell test.’38 When you hear bullshit, you may know it by its smell.

THE BELIEVING BRAIN p 159

Yes, but the story teller writes either as scientist or as creative artist. These are separate intentions on the part of the transmitter of the narrative. Modern scientific truth which employs scepticism and explicit language , is not creative truth which employs a different linguistic register.
Pleas excuse me for being didactic , but please see Basil Bernstein on his social theory of language.

From ChatGPT
Bernstein’s Restricted Code: A Quick Recap
Basil Bernstein’s restricted code is:

Context-dependent – it assumes shared background knowledge.

Economical in syntax – often using shorter, simpler constructions.

Implicit in meaning – much is suggested rather than stated.

Emotionally resonant – rich in tone, gesture, and connotation.

Relational and situated – embedded in close-knit social contexts.

These features, while often viewed as limiting in educational contexts, form the aesthetic and emotional foundation of poetic language.

[Belinda]

How interesting: I couln’t have put it better myself.

The only way to get rid of the knowledge of God is to make a foe of Him. And people wonder how anybody ends up in an eternity without God….

They choose it. C.S. Lewis was right. Everybody who is lost has chosen to be lost.

No, everyone who is lost is a victim of circumstances. Any man can be misled by a clever exploiter . If a man does not know that danger then good people should tell him of it, for his own safety and the safety of others.

For instance, think of the millions of Germans who were exploited by Hitler and his Nazis. The German people who said after 1945 ,that they did not know what was going on chose not to know because at the time they were deliberately misled.

There is always cause for men to choose what they choose.

Belief is easier than disbelief.

For some, stroppiness comes easily. For others cautiousness is easier. See you at the barricades Martin!

[Gary Childress]

The only way to divest oneself of this sick madness is to Foe the source.

How interesting: I couln’t have put it better myself.

The only way to get rid of the knowledge of God is to make a foe of Him. And people wonder how anybody ends up in an eternity without God….

They choose it. C.S. Lewis was right. Everybody who is lost has chosen to be lost.

If he flooded the world killing almost everyone, if he blames everyone for the mistake of 2 people, if he endorses genocide, if he creates a world where people suffer for pursuing what is enticing to them, then he is NOT a good God, hands down. You kissing his ass doesn't end the suffering of others in this world.

[Belinda]

How particular. No wonder we need the scandal of it for it. The only way to divest oneself of this sick madness is to Foe the source.

It's not the only way. You could treat each narrative as a pericope, a cut-around, and 'like,' as in tick ,only those stories that help you and your children. You seem to be a free spirit.
This how you evaluate other literature.

I don't Foe texts, juts believers trapped in loops by them. Here. Separation is mandatory. Add foe. We can then be analytical where they cannot be.

Thanks for the clarification.

[Belinda]

It's not the only way. You could treat each narrative as a pericope, a cut-around, and 'like,' as in tick ,only those stories that help you and your children. You seem to be a free spirit.
This how you evaluate other literature.

I don't Foe texts, juts believers trapped in loops by them. Here. Separation is mandatory. Add foe. We can then be analytical where they cannot be.

Thanks for the clarification.

So in that case you could like CS Lewis's Narnia stories without subscribing to the author's moral philosophy?

[Gary Childress]

1200 pages of discussion concerning the unknowable based on an evil book written by some tribe in the Middle East. Very impressive.

[Alexis Jacobi]

… and though that may be so, Gary, Christian religion and Christian ethical-based philosophy, has given the world extraordinarily valuable things. Many times I have recommended The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought:

Embracing the viewpoints of Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox thinkers, of conservatives, liberals, radicals, and agnostics, Christianity today is anything but monolithic or univocal. In The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, general editor Adrian Hastings has tried to capture a sense of the great diversity of opinion that swirls about under the heading of Christian thought. Indeed, the 260 contributors, who hail from twenty countries, represent as wide a range of perspectives as possible.

To react to the (often but not always) distorted apologetics of Immanuel Can is a mistake when the full gamut of Christian (not to mention Jewish) thought should be considered carefully and rationally.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I do believe what the Bible says about how the world came to be fallen. If you imagine otherwise, I’m sorry…but you’re just dead wrong. (It won’t be the first time. By now, you’ll be getting used to being wrong, I suppose.)

I assert that you do not really believe it.

If you do believe it, truly, could you explain the mechanism and the process?

Adam & Eve sinned. But prior to that the Earth and the Cosmos were different. Nature did not function as it does now (creatures feeding off creatures in processes of life and death). So, a change came about. But how?

The story you say you believe must have a scientifically coherent base. But you cannot, (and of course you will not) describe what it is. You will not even try. The story is a sort of filler that supports “belief” on other levels.

Your “dogmatic belief” is fake, Immanuel. And there is a level (I surmise) in you where you know this.

The lion did not ever “lie with the lamb”. Nor will such a relationship ever be restored on Earth.

[Immanuel Can]

How interesting: I couln’t have put it better myself.

The only way to get rid of the knowledge of God is to make a foe of Him. And people wonder how anybody ends up in an eternity without God….

They choose it. C.S. Lewis was right. Everybody who is lost has chosen to be lost.

No, everyone who is lost is a victim of circumstances.

When a man or woman chooses something, he or she is no victim. He or she is the cause.

If a man does not know that danger then good people should tell him of it, for his own safety and the safety of others.

I could not agree more. It is precisely why there is a sacred duty on all Christians to share their faith…that if the hearer is willing, the choice will be clear. This is why Jesus repeated, many times, the phrase, “He who has ears, let him hear.” He provided that message of the danger and of the deliverance with absolute clarity: but it was the disposition of the hearer that was going to determine the outcome.

For instance, think of the millions of Germans who were exploited by Hitler and his Nazis. The German people who said after 1945 ,that they did not know what was going on chose not to know because at the time they were deliberately misled.

And yet, so many of them saw the trains of helpless victims being shipped to their deaths, or lived in the precincts of the 44,000 prison, forced labour and concentration camps that Germany established and ran. How plausible, then, is it to think that the Germans were all mere victims of a very clever campaign of misinformation?

There is always cause for men to choose what they choose.

But that cause is often found in their volition, their nature, their wills. As John wrote, “The Light has come into the world, but men preferred darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” So the message, the warning was there: but men looked at their evil options, and preferred those. And that speaks to the dark character of human nature.

Incidentally, you’ll find that this is the greatest failure of Socialism: that it is founded on a belief that if we only engineer the right social situations, men will be instinctively good. This belief has never been justified anytime in history, nor by any social rearrangement. In fact, the opposite has proved true, and true in 100% of the cases. What happens when men try to engineer the right social situations is that not only are the people found to be too corrupt to make the idealistic system work, but even the aspiring engineers themselves are so corrupt (for there are no specially naturally-righteous and trustworthy people who cannot be corrupted) that Socialism dissolves into totalitarianism every time.

That’s about the most confirmable fact in all of human history: that human beings fail to live up to their aspirations, because they cannot resist the opportunity to seize some advantage, or because they’re driven by spite and envy, or because they’re simply being too lazy to make the effort to sustain a good project for long. Meanwhile, our various democracies have turned out to be just as flawed, but blessed with a better sense of what to expect from human nature — to anticipate the failure, and so to distribute power in such a way that though it remains accessible to the people in some measure, it cannot be so tightly concentrated in the hands of the corrupt. Term limits, distribution of responsibilities, constitutions, votes and such distribute power in such a way that it is difficult — perhaps not impossible, but certainly much more problematic — for an autocratic group to seize all the reins of power and brutalize the people for their own gain.

Not so when Big Government becomes the practice, of course. For Big Government always demands more and more power, and the dropping of every limitation, so it can force its self-serving projects forward without the inconvenience of consulting the public or caring for their protestations.

And this explains the old aphorism about democracy: that it’s the worst form of government except for every other form. It’s not perfect, but it’s always better than the alternatives because of its more realistic view of human nature.

[Alexis Jacobi]

If he flooded the world killing almost everyone, if he blames everyone for the mistake of 2 people, if he endorses genocide, if he creates a world where people suffer for pursuing what is enticing to them, then he is NOT a good God, hands down. You kissing his ass doesn't end the suffering of others in this world.

Here’s the odd thing, Gary. It is just as much you who are locked within the severe limitations of a dogmatic story, and you who literally suffers in it, when compared to a classical Christian believer.

You see and acutely feel the literal horror of a dog-eat-dog world. I.e. the literal ecological world of Nature. And you acutely feel and react against man’s acquiescence to, man’s profound complicity in life’s essential — and necessary! — injustices. You cannot bear that it is like that. And how often have you “blamed God” for allowing such a world to come to be?

Thus, to escape a torment, a perceptual conflict from which there is no escape, you must turn against the Author of this horrifying script. You are deeply involved in the logic of the Adam & Eve story. You detest the “curse” that is said to have afflicted the Earth and the Cosmos.

There are alternatives! And as you know I sell them to the wealthy and the gullible who are willing to submit to beautiful spiritual but liberating tortures. Now is the time! Get out the checkbook and sign up for The Course!

[MikeNovack]

1200 pages of discussion concerning the unknowable based on an evil book written by some tribe in the Middle East. Very impressive.

That tribe is not responsible for other people appropriating the material, re-interpreting it to fit their own purposes, etc. There is no way for people creating material to prevent that from happening. If you want to judge the work "evil", please discuss that in terms of the understanding/meaning for the originators, not in terms of what other people have made of it.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

I don't Foe texts, juts believers trapped in loops by them. Here. Separation is mandatory. Add foe. We can then be analytical where they cannot be.

Thanks for the clarification.

So in that case you could like CS Lewis's Narnia stories without subscribing to the author's moral philosophy?

I do. Pullman's - the Anti-Lewis - even more. I love good fantasy, and nearly all of good sci-fi is pure fantasy, will never happen, even the 'hardest'.