Christianity

[Martin Peter Clarke]

… 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.

The full gamut is predicated on mere belief, on faith. And it can be most beautiful. Most yearning. Most humane. Most inclusive. The finest fantasy. IC's is the grimmest of misanthropic fairy tales. And the psychology of that is fascinating. Basically it's Schadenfreude.

[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

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.

Aye, Pan narrans is wired for good stories. Only the awkward have to follow the truth.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

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!

Nah Belinda. Everyone dies on the barricades. Away to the mountains to wage guerrilla war, or [be] subversive under the bourgeois radar.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The full gamut is predicated on mere belief, on faith. And it can be most beautiful. Most yearning. Most humane. Most inclusive. The finest fantasy. IC's is the grimmest of misanthropic fairy tales. And the psychology of that is fascinating. Basically it's Schadenfreude.

There is, I personally believe, a religious or spiritual practice that opens one to greater levels of understanding about existence itself, and mysteries of being. It is in my view all internal and thus experienced on an internal level. I could, just for an example, refer to the introverted psycho-logics of a man like Jung: decidedly one of the figures of recent history who took Nietzsche by the horns, or put another way rode the impulses from Nietzsche’s dynamitings of the conventional way of looking at things.

The curious thing is that when an entire inteligencia turned away from dogmatic formulations, the only avenue open to those thwarted by a dead-ended theological system, involved the “inward turn”. However, there are many downsides to such necessitated subjectivity. Yet, it seems to me, it was all inevitable. (I am referring to a sweep of perspective shifts beginning, say, in the mid 1800s and continuing into the early decades of the 1900s).

I recognize that making a reference to Jungian mysticism — all bound up in multi-layered heresies — does not qualify as an “answer” to the Death of God problem either for philosophy or science, so I can only make a very weak reference to “something-or-other” that seems impossible to define.

What I have taken away from my “encounter” with Immanuel is that he deals largely in superficialities insofar as he never, ever alludes to the bounty that, for example, Christian mystics describe when they recite their stories about “value-content” within their internal relationship (to their spiritual ideal to which they are apprenticed).

The rejection of the exterior story and all its elements makes sense. But the interior experience or relationship is in a separate realm. I am (personally) uncertain if the term “fantasy” is a fair one. It would certainly serve your purposes (since you do describe yourself as an atheist). But for me sheer negation is too harsh a cutting-off point.

[Belinda]

Belief is easier than disbelief.

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

Nah Belinda. Everyone dies on the barricades. Away to the mountains to wage guerrilla war, or subversive under the bourgeois radar.

But I don't know how to subvert the new UK terrorism law that calls peaceful protest "terrorism" ,other than being there visible on a march or demo.I regret being too feeble to be there myself.

[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


distilled by Michael Shermer from Sam Harris,



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.

Aye, Pan narrans is wired for good stories. Only the awkward have to follow the truth.

Please advise on the best order to start reading the books.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

The full gamut is predicated on mere belief, on faith. And it can be most beautiful. Most yearning. Most humane. Most inclusive. The finest fantasy. IC's is the grimmest of misanthropic fairy tales. And the psychology of that is fascinating. Basically it's Schadenfreude.

There is, I personally believe, a religious or spiritual practice that opens one to greater levels of understanding about existence itself, and mysteries of being. It is in my view all internal and thus experienced on an internal level. I could, just for an example, refer to the introverted psycho-logics of a man like Jung: decidedly one of the figures of recent history who took Nietzsche by the horns, or put another way rode the impulses from Nietzsche’s dynamitings of the conventional way of looking at things.

The curious thing is that when an entire inteligencia turned away from dogmatic formulations, the only avenue open to those thwarted by a dead-ended theological system, involved the “inward turn”. However, there are many downsides to such necessitated subjectivity. Yet, it seems to me, it was all inevitable. (I am referring to a sweep of perspective shifts beginning, say, in the mid 1800s and continuing into the early decades of the 1900s).

I recognize that making a reference to Jungian mysticism — all bound up in multi-layered heresies — does not qualify as an “answer” to the Death of God problem either for philosophy or science, so I can only make a very weak reference to “something-or-other” that seems impossible to define.

What I have taken away from my “encounter” with Immanuel is that he deals largely in superficialities insofar as he never, ever alludes to the bounty that, for example, Christian mystics describe when they recite their stories about “value-content” within their internal relationship (to their spiritual ideal to which they are apprenticed).

The rejection of the exterior story and all its elements makes sense. But the interior experience or relationship is in a separate realm. I am (personally) uncertain if the term “fantasy” is a fair one. It would certainly serve your purposes (since you do describe yourself as an atheist). But for me sheer negation is too harsh a cutting-off point.

Well said. As I implicitly said, I yearn too. Death is too harsh a cutting-off point. But there it is. Preceded by meaningless horror one way or another. But not in the azure blue sky above the white and grey billows of cloud through my open patio doors to the left of my neighbour's red brick above my little green oasis. Thank Nature for being easily distracted! The sky's gone powder blue and the cloud towers snow white in the sun now.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

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

Nah Belinda. Everyone dies on the barricades. Away to the mountains to wage guerrilla war, or [be] subversive under the bourgeois radar.

But I don't know how to subvert the new UK terrorism law that calls peaceful protest "terrorism" ,other than being there visible on a march or demo.I regret being too feeble to be there myself.

Cutting an airbase fence and attacking a military jet with a crow bar is not peaceful protest. Nearly as futile and alienating as Extinction Rebellion. Make tea not war. In a Challenger II battle tank you can do both!

[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.

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.

Men are always instinctively good unless they are corrupted or unhealthy. The young child is instinctive and good until social norms corrupt him. It's true of unregulated capitalism that desperately poor people are more likely to become criminals than if they and their children have basic rights to food, shelter, and freedoms accorded by the state.

“The Light has come into the world, but men preferred darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” explains the result of men's evil deeds (preferred darkness) but not the causes of men's evil deeds.

"Big government" Immanuel , is not a product of socialism . Before there was much in the way of government as we know it , welfare of the poor, the sick, and the stranger was provided by the estate of the Church. After the Church became insufficient for welfare due to urbanisation the state gradually took over.

[Gary Childress]

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.

Well, according to their book, God drowns everyone when we displease him, eggs on Abraham to potentially sacrifice his own son, tells his "chosen people" to commit genocide, the world itself is a horror show for many people on Earth. Doesn't sound like a God worth worshiping to me--more like a demon. Maybe toss the Holy Babel in the trash and try something else.

[Belinda]

Nah Belinda. Everyone dies on the barricades. Away to the mountains to wage guerrilla war, or [be] subversive under the bourgeois radar.

But I don't know how to subvert the new UK terrorism law that calls peaceful protest "terrorism" ,other than being there visible on a march or demo.I regret being too feeble to be there myself.

Cutting an airbase fence and attacking a military jet with a crow bar is not peaceful protest. Nearly as futile and alienating as Extinction Rebellion. Make tea not war. In a Challenger II battle tank you can do both!

It's a minor inconvenience compared with terrorism like Isis , Taliban, and Al Qaeda.
It may be futile to demonstrate against a law like for instance the new UK terrorism law, but I'd be very afraid of the new police powers. I am surprised at you Martin quite honestly.
I daresay there were many people who were alienated by Gandhi's or Mandela's peaceful protests.

[Dubious]

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

It's not an evil book per se. It reflects an ancient mind-set of a distinct people - in the process of making themselves distinct - full of inconsistencies as would be natural for an oral tradition when rendered into writing by a whole set of scribes writing on the same events imagined or real. Why anyone would consider it sacred, worthy of belief as the indubitable word of god in the present age is the quandary!

[Martin Peter Clarke]

But I don't know how to subvert the new UK terrorism law that calls peaceful protest "terrorism" ,other than being there visible on a march or demo.I regret being too feeble to be there myself.

Cutting an airbase fence and attacking a military jet with a crow bar is not peaceful protest. Nearly as futile and alienating as Extinction Rebellion. Make tea not war. In a Challenger II battle tank you can do both!

It's a minor inconvenience compared with terrorism like Isis , Taliban, and Al Qaeda.
It may be futile to demonstrate against a law like for instance the new UK terrorism law, but I'd be very afraid of the new police powers. I am surprised at you Martin quite honestly.
I daresay there were many people who were alienated by Gandhi's or Mandela's peaceful protests.

Attacking a military base is not peaceful. Gandhi's was. Mandela's wasn't.

[Belinda]

Cutting an airbase fence and attacking a military jet with a crow bar is not peaceful protest. Nearly as futile and alienating as Extinction Rebellion. Make tea not war. In a Challenger II battle tank you can do both!

It's a minor inconvenience compared with terrorism like Isis , Taliban, and Al Qaeda.
It may be futile to demonstrate against a law like for instance the new UK terrorism law, but I'd be very afraid of the new police powers. I am surprised at you Martin quite honestly.
I daresay there were many people who were alienated by Gandhi's or Mandela's peaceful protests.

Attacking a military base is not peaceful. Gandhi's was. Mandela's wasn't.

Then is peaceful protest a spectrum?
The old country loses some credibility when its defences include silencing such of its people who do free speech, and free assembly.

Armed police threatened to arrest Kent protester for holding Palestinian flag
Officers accused Laura Murton who also had a sign saying

Are these things done on Albion's shore

[promethean75]

"Maybe toss the Holy Babel in the trash"

Speaking of babbling, you know that story about the tower? Lol that's what happens when people confined to a single area aren't aware that there are people elsewhere that speak a different language and they have to account for it somehow. Ah, everybody once spoke the same language, but god is now punishing us.

No, sorry, that's not what happened at all.