Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

You are not wrong, as I have been indicating.

Yes, we know. I’m right. I’ve demonstrated it by the absence of any moral axioms associated with subjectivism.

Where you are wrong is in asserting that you have, or have access to, and can produce, the absolute, objective moral rules backed up by that Supernatural Entity.

I haven’t tried to show that yet. You’re too impatient.

But if you go back and read my last message in response to Mike, you’ll get a better understanding of why some authority is always necessary, and also be reminded of why “it’s subjective” is no answer at all.

Immanuel, why not admit that if no God existed it would be necessary to invent Him

Because an invented God would be just human ruse to get away with tyrannizing others. Only the real God will do.

[MikeNovack]

Because an invented God would be just human ruse to get away with tyrannizing others. Only the real God will do.

How do you distinguish between a real god or gods and invented ones? In an objective way.

It is my observation that humans have believed in lots of different gods. Give me a reason why I should believe yours is any more real than some other person's.

But more specific to your statement, why do you seem to believe that the belief of this other person is a ruse? That they do not HONESTLY believe in this deity of theirs. It is one thing for you to claim that all these other people are mistaken in their beliefs. One thing for you to believe their gods are not real gods. Quite another for you to claim "dishonest", that they do not, in fact, believe in their gods.

SOME religions do not tyrannize others, do not care what other people do or not believe. But that is not true of yours.

[Immanuel Can]

Because an invented God would be just human ruse to get away with tyrannizing others. Only the real God will do.

How do you distinguish between a real god or gods and invented ones? In an objective way.

Well, there’s a lot you can rule out very, very easily. First, and of those little “god” things that a) are said to have an origin, and b) are said to have a freshness date cannot possibly be the Supreme Being and First Cause, because they are contingent, perishable, limited beings. Whatever accounts for their existence would be more “supreme” than they are. So they couldn’t possibly be the Supreme being. So say goodbye to Loki, or Zeus, or any of the purely-local “spirit” beings that are said to inhabit trees, rocks, etc. They can all be eliminated before we start.

A little harder is the question of what to do about competing beings that fit the bill, though: beings said to be eternal, all-powerful, ultimate, and creatorial, for example. For there are a few of those.

But very quickly, you can eliminate some of them, too. For a start, if they have no means of self-revelation, then they cannot be of any interest to us. They’ve hit-and-quit. They arrived, created a universe, and left. They aren’t coming back. We know nothing about them, and anybody who says they does owes us an explanation of how he knows what nobody else can know. So gone is any talk of some “transcendent spirit” of unknown and unknowable nature; and gone is the “Abyss” of the Gnostics, and also even the Deist god. We can’t say for sure such never existed, but we can safely say that, since they’re unknowable, there’s no work for us to do in relation to them. They’re irrelevant at best, and fictional at worst.

This leaves us with some form of all-powerful, Supreme Being and First Cause, something capable of creating a universe and having some form of revelation to us that would make His existence relevant to what we are and what we do. We’re down to a small pool now.

But we are not without important evidence that needs still to be considered. For creation itself is a revelation of God. Just as a painting done by Picasso would bear his particular style, the manner of creation would encode evidence of the kind of God who created it. It is in this sense, I think, that Paul writes in Romans 1 that all men “know God” and are “without excuse” because "since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, being understood by what has been made…” (1:20)

Now, could God have gone beyond this? In other words, could there be a reason He created a world? Could He have intended something by creating us, and not just done it randomly? But if He did it randomly, then again, it’s of no concern to us; that god didn’t mean us to know Him, or to do anything, or to have any meaning or point. We were a kind of accident, maybe. But why should we care? On the other hand, if God intended to create us, and had a purpose in doing so, and had goals and purposes for us, then we have a new situation. But we certainly cannot afford to ignore Him then, and can start to ask, “Why am I here, and what am I supposed to be about?”

So it’s only if we have a particular kind of God that the existence of a god would make any difference. And then the question arises, which of the remaining plausible candidates is the kind of God that matters? And if He has given us any indication of His intentions, where is it to be found, beyond the basic intuition we all can get from creation that some God exists?

Now we have the essential question of revelation: has God spoken? If He has not, then again, we find the question irrelevant. We have no way of knowing anything about this God, His purposes, His intentions, His will for us; but if He has….then where?

This is where we examine the available candidates for ourselves. And my suggestion to you…well, I’ve done my search, and maybe you want to do yours without me forcing your hand. If so, I can commit that task to you. But I do believe that anybody who examines fairly and openly the possible sources of revelation of God will soon be in no doubt about the only serious candidate.

It is my observation that humans have believed in lots of different gods. Give me a reason why I should believe yours is any more real than some other person's.

Don’t consider one or the other because I do. Consider it for yourself, I suggest. I don’t think the evidence balances out, at all; but you’d have to see that for yourself.

But more specific to your statement, why do you seem to believe that the belief of this other person is a ruse? That they do not HONESTLY believe in this deity of theirs.

Honesty isn’t the point, obviously. One can easily be “honestly mistaken.” People are, all the time. What’s important is to believe what’s true, obviously.

But all belief systems are exclusive. There are no genuinely inclusive ones. And a little thought will prove that to you. Even the most “open-minded” and “relativistic” person will still insist that exclusivists of various kinds are wrong, inferior, “closed-minded,” or at least would be better people if they were “open-minded” and “relativistic” like the subjectivist imagines himself to be. If believing your way is better than somebody else’s, then the relativist is a bigot about his “open-mindedness” — he fancies himself as morally-superior in no less Pharisaical a way than the most passionate zealot of some cult.

So whatever discomfort you feel with the thought that some people may be wrong, it’s pretty easy to get over: you quickly discover that the basic laws of logic prove that at least some HAVE to be wrong. There’s no other way it can logically be. Mutually-exclusive accounts of God cannot be simultaneously true. In fact, it must be the case that not just one or two of them, but MOST of them will turn out, to be wrong. And if we think even harder, we realize that ultimately, only one set of propositions can be true about God. So only one can be right, if any is.

[Belinda]

Yes, we know. I’m right. I’ve demonstrated it by the absence of any moral axioms associated with subjectivism.

I haven’t tried to show that yet. You’re too impatient.

But if you go back and read my last message in response to Mike, you’ll get a better understanding of why some authority is always necessary, and also be reminded of why “it’s subjective” is no answer at all.

Immanuel, why not admit that if no God existed it would be necessary to invent Him

Because an invented God would be just human ruse to get away with tyrannizing others. Only the real God will do.

But it's not the God that makes his people tyrants. Allah and Jehovah can be tyrants when they are politicised or taken over by tyrannical people. Christianity and Islam each contains a spectrum of liberal to authoritarian sects. There are progressive and reformist groups attached to Islam and Christianity.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Because an invented God would be just human ruse to get away with tyrannizing others. Only the real God will do.

How do you distinguish between a real god or gods and invented ones? In an objective way.

It is my observation that humans have believed in lots of different gods. Give me a reason why I should believe yours is any more real than some other person's.

But more specific to your statement, why do you seem to believe that the belief of this other person is a ruse? That they do not HONESTLY believe in this deity of theirs. It is one thing for you to claim that all these other people are mistaken in their beliefs. One thing for you to believe their gods are not real gods. Quite another for you to claim "dishonest", that they do not, in fact, believe in their gods.

SOME religions do not tyrannize others, do not care what other people do or not believe. But that is not true of yours.

None of the Abrahamic.

[Dubious]

Yes! It means that none of these is objectively right. They’re all just delusions. There’s no such thing as “morality.” Nobody can rightfully tell you what you should or shouldn’t do, and nobody can rightfully charge or praise you for anything you do. There are no moral standards.

You forgot to add, other than the one you have and fully acknowledge.

No, I didn’t. I was hypothesizing based purely on starting from your worldview, plus simple logic. Nothing more.

The simple logic of it is that based on what we now know of the Jesus movement, the real Jesus can be consigned to a rabble-rouser preaching in the hills of Galilee. When he finally arrived in the big city, Jerusalem, for the first time, he continued his disruptions and got quickly noticed by the Romans. When he was crucified - very different from the usual Renaissance style - it was totally unexpected; there was no thought of his dying as payment for the sins of humanity - one of the dumbest ideas ever invented - which came later through Paul. It was he who single-handed was responsible for refurbishing a back-alley preacher from Galilee into a Christian Jesus opposite to the real one who was no multi-ethnic inclusionist of love but instead, one solely contained within his own tradition. The god you believe is going to save you is the reedited one that Paul preached across the main cities of the empire with obvious success.

[Immanuel Can]

You forgot to add, other than the one you have and fully acknowledge.

No, I didn’t. I was hypothesizing based purely on starting from your worldview, plus simple logic. Nothing more.

The simple logic of it is that based on what we now know of the Jesus movement...

Whatever you say about that won’t help secularism. As I said before: no matter how many other ideologies/religions cannot rationalize morality, it remains true that secularism cannot. Their failures, if such they have, do not add success to secularism’s possibilities.

Secularism dies on the results of its own worldview; not on anybody else’s.

[Immanuel Can]

Immanuel, why not admit that if no God existed it would be necessary to invent Him

Because an invented God would be just human ruse to get away with tyrannizing others. Only the real God will do.

But it's not the God that makes his people tyrants.

Right. It’s the people who want to be the tyrants. And they only use whatever excuse they can find to help them get the job done. It could be “national interests,” or “the common good,” or “social justice,” or “Allah,” or “Ahura Mazda,” or “democracy,” or “saving the planet from climate disaster” — unscrupulous and tyrannical men will use any cause at all to do their work. And in most cases, they use the name of something good to enable them to do the evil they desire; after all, if they came out and said, “What we’d really like to do is take everything from you, then kill you,” then you probably would be alert to them. But it’s the bait-and-switch that works for them, time after time.

But the One they’ll answer to it for, that’s the real God.

[MikeNovack]

"SOME religions do not tyrannize others, do not care what other people do or not believe. But that is not true of yours"

None of the Abrahamic.

That's not true. Christianity and Islam impose themselves on others. Judaism has never done so. Even though Jews might believe god the only true god they believe this god is giving a rule set for Jews to live by. Not anybody else. Not required of others to live by THESE rules to be a good person. Converting to Judaism involves a ceremonial adoption into the tribe. Reserved (not our business) what rules god might have for other people.

[Dubious]

No, I didn’t. I was hypothesizing based purely on starting from your worldview, plus simple logic. Nothing more.

The simple logic of it is that based on what we now know of the Jesus movement...

Whatever you say about that won’t help secularism. As I said before: no matter how many other ideologies/religions cannot rationalize morality, it remains true that secularism cannot. Their failures, if such they have, do not add success to secularism’s possibilities.

Secularism dies on the results of its own worldview; not on anybody else’s.

Secularism doesn't need any help, least of all from religion. It adapts. It doesn't function according to the demands of some overlord autocrat of our own creation. Secularism demands intelligence, not mindless obedience to some supposed sacred text written when the world was hugely different in nearly every respect and foreign in every conceivable way to ours.

It's estimated there are approximately 22 sextillion planets in the universe yet the biblical god chose this planet and not only that, but a certain group on it to be his Chosen People. To further compound the absurdity, the Son of this god died as a sacrifice for our sins and that whoever believes in him will be saved.

What is your definition of insanity. Is it still possible for you to have one?

[Gary Childress]

If morality were "subjective" then it would depend upon the subject what is moral.

Non-sequitur: it does not logically follow.

What follows is that there is no such thing as morality. It means that to say “I want” is the same thing as “is moral.” But people can want opposite and even horrendous and repugnant things. Subjectivism leaves nobody with any basis for saying anything is actually better or worse than anything else. It means infant sacrifice and infant baptism are the same thing — moral equivalents.

Stop being an idiot IC. You're full of shit, and you should know it if you know logic. It does not logically follow that if there is no God then morality cannot be objective nor that morality is non-existent. Get your logic straight. I'm tired of this back and forth and baseless assertions of yours. Or if you think it logically follows then present your sound deductive argument to that effect.

[Gary Childress]

Objective morality is possible, even without a God. End of discussion for me. I'm agnostic. I'll leave the prejudiced to defend their prejudices (hopefully using sound deductive arguments).

https://chatgpt.com/share/6883f768-d47c ... c251b4b833

[Martin Peter Clarke]

"SOME religions do not tyrannize others, do not care what other people do or not believe. But that is not true of yours"

None of the Abrahamic.

That's not true. Christianity and Islam impose themselves on others. Judaism has never done so. Even though Jews might believe god the only true god they believe this god is giving a rule set for Jews to live by. Not anybody else. Not required of others to live by THESE rules to be a good person. Converting to Judaism involves a ceremonial adoption into the tribe. Reserved (not our business) what rules god might have for other people.

Tell that to the Palestinians. For 80 years. Netanyahu has invoked the extermination of the Amalekites. Judaism doesn't proselytize. It is just used to justify genocidal conquest for Lebensraum.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

If morality were "subjective" then it would depend upon the subject what is moral.

Non-sequitur: it does not logically follow.

What follows is that there is no such thing as morality. It means that to say “I want” is the same thing as “is moral.” But people can want opposite and even horrendous and repugnant things. Subjectivism leaves nobody with any basis for saying anything is actually better or worse than anything else. It means infant sacrifice and infant baptism are the same thing — moral equivalents.

Stop being an idiot IC. You're full of shit, and you should know it if you know logic. It does not logically follow that if there is no God then morality cannot be objective nor that morality is non-existent. Get your logic straight. I'm tired of this back and forth and baseless assertions of yours. Or if you think it logically follows then present your sound deductive argument to that effect.

Not only is morality not objective without God, it is arbitrarily incoherently subjective with Him. Like meaning. Purpose.

[Gary Childress]

Non-sequitur: it does not logically follow.

What follows is that there is no such thing as morality. It means that to say “I want” is the same thing as “is moral.” But people can want opposite and even horrendous and repugnant things. Subjectivism leaves nobody with any basis for saying anything is actually better or worse than anything else. It means infant sacrifice and infant baptism are the same thing — moral equivalents.

Stop being an idiot IC. You're full of shit, and you should know it if you know logic. It does not logically follow that if there is no God then morality cannot be objective nor that morality is non-existent. Get your logic straight. I'm tired of this back and forth and baseless assertions of yours. Or if you think it logically follows then present your sound deductive argument to that effect.

Not only is morality not objective without God...

Baseless assertion.