Christianity

[Martin Peter Clarke]

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.

Uh huh. Give me an objective, universal, moral, scientific fact now.

[Gary Childress]

Not only is morality not objective without God...

Baseless assertion.

Uh huh. Give me an objective, universal, moral, scientific fact now.

Lack of knowledge as to what would fulfill that request does not = proof that morality is non-objective.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Baseless assertion.

Uh huh. Give me an objective, universal, moral, scientific fact now.

Lack of knowledge as to what would fulfill that request does not = proof that morality is non-objective.

So you know nothing then. Can't think of a thing. It's like pointing to free will.

2. What Kind of “Objective Morality” Do They Support?

(a) Naturalistic moral realism: Moral facts are grounded in natural or social facts (e.g., suffering is objectively bad because of biological facts about pain).

(b) Constructivism: Moral truths come from rational agreement or idealized consensus (e.g., John Rawls, Christine Korsgaard).

(c) Non-natural realism: Moral facts are abstract truths like mathematical truths (e.g., Derek Parfit).

These accounts typically do not require God. In fact, many moral realists are atheists.

(a) Abuse of power - 'sin' - causes 'moral' suffering. (I'm trying to make this work here).

(b) We institutionalize (a). We compromise, we work it out for ourselves together, we idealize, we argue, we rationalize, we vote. Morality is what emerges.

(c) Uh huh.

Care, don't harm. Be fair. That's it. Why? Do as you would be done by. How does God make that any better? It always makes it (net) worse. My favourite question of all professionals; doctors, carers, lawyers, tradespeople, is, what would you do?

[popeye1945]

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

Agreed, one cannot disprove creations of the imagination one way or another; then one is left with evidence, probability, and observations of the real world. How do you believe that objective morality is possible from your subjective perspective? Remember, biology is the measure and the meaning of all things. Those things that are not the natural physical world are biological projections into the physical world, expressing the nature of the organism, in this case, humanity. Which makes apparent reality a biological/subjective projection. You do not experience what is out there; you experience how what is out there alters your biological state, giving you the experience of your body, not an objective world in and of itself.

[Belinda]

"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.

Is Judaism not a revealed religion? Jehovah revealed himself to Moses. Moreover Jehovah told Moses He was a jealous God. Judaism then is a tribal religion not a universal religion like Xianity or Islam; and "Converting to Judaism involves a ceremonial adoption into the tribe" endorses that Judaism is a tribal not a universal religion. NB Jesus was ,as we know,a Jew and Paul it was who universalised Christian Judaism.

Tribal religions are unsuited to today's de facto multicultural world. Therefore Jews have three mutually exclusive options :

* Liberally reform Judaism
* Aggressively politicise Judaism
* Fade into an anthropological or folk curiosity

The above is not in support of antisemitism but endorses the liberal end of the spectrum where each religion and sect is relatively located.

[Alexis Jacobi]

When Christian supremacism is questioned, challenged and undermined, it follows that Hebrew supremacism is next in line. Christianity is, or was, in essence a rebellious Hebrew movement where, to put it simply, Hebrews turned against Hebrews and Hebrews declared that the god of the State was not really God but a demonic expression. It amounted to the “ultimate accusation” and an expression of sheer animosity.

Christianity contains in itself, because of its supremacism, both a reason for its success and ascendency, and the root of its undermining of itself. Simply put, the Hebrew-Christian supremacism is expressed when, necessarily, all gods and god-concepts are redefined as demons.

In a very literal sense, for example, when the Spanish and Portuguese explorers ventured out into the world, that world was a place of unruly demons who held sway. It was imperative to break the back of those “gods” and to assert, and to demonstrate, that the Hebrew-Christian god-concept was better. It was not altogether a bad argument since, and in fact, the Christian religious came with a powerful, successful civilizational and civilizing structure.

In this sense, and certainly retrospectively, it is easy to see that Christian culture and its cultural economic and statesmanship enterprise had all the advantages.

And here is the essential point: the message of the Gospels, its core command, is take the Gospel to all the nations of the Earth.

It is not well understood though that the motive of “world domination”, and indeed the civilizing of the world, is a fundamental Hebrew notion. The process of the Hebrew revelation in history is, literally, to tame to heathen and yoke him up to God’s purposes.

One should, at the very least, have some awareness of what the 1948 establishment (by force mind you) of the Israeli state means for 1) hyper-religious Jews of a certain orientation and 2) ultra-zealous Christian Zionists. The Al-Aksa Flood attack was an attack against the prospect, now being planned, to rebuild the former Jewish Temple (on or near the Temple Mount) and to begin the ritual sacrifice all over again.

There are so many different, confusing and conflicting currents taking shape and having effect in our cultural world as the foundations of Christian culture (with attendant metaphysics) are undermined and rejected, on one side, but the civilizational impulse is still moving forward.

[Alexis Jacobi]

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

As we — we philosophy-imbued — recognize, no one can define God nor can anyone present God. Anyone who tries (like Immanuel) is laughed out of the room. Only believers can “believe in God” in a wide, conceptual sense, and only believers and practitioners of a religious modality feel and realize God’s presence in their lived life.

I assure you that Jesus and Krishna actually manifest themselves to the respective practitioners. This god-presence is a providential force in subjective experience.

How will the genuine secular-atheist define and understand this manifestation and this relationship? Obviously, it is interpreted (generally) negatively. Or psychologically. Or as “hallucination” and imagination.

But in a very wide sense, the Hebrew-Christian God is manifest through Greek philosophical and rationalistic terms as Manifest Destiny. By what has become manifest.

The Hebrew-Christian god manifests his (“”) reality by a transformation of the world into a model held in the mind, the conceptual mind, and in the will. This will manifests itself through time — over decades, centuries and millennia. If there is one notable Hebrew trait it is this “will”. Gentiles are astounded and alarmed by it. But its necessity is clearly expressed throughout the Hebrew scriptures.

The world will be transformed. And that Will is not the possession of any singular nor group human, rather it is something else altogether

[Belinda]

When Christian supremacism is questioned, challenged and undermined, it follows that Hebrew supremacism is next in line. Christianity is, or was, in essence a rebellious Hebrew movement where, to put it simply, Hebrews turned against Hebrews and Hebrews declared that the god of the State was not really God but a demonic expression. It amounted to the “ultimate accusation” and an expression of sheer animosity.

Christianity contains in itself, because of its supremacism, both a reason for its success and ascendency, and the root of its undermining of itself. Simply put, the Hebrew-Christian supremacism is expressed when, necessarily, all gods and god-concepts are redefined as demons.

In a very literal sense, for example, when the Spanish and Portuguese explorers ventured out into the world, that world was a place of unruly demons who held sway. It was imperative to break the back of those “gods” and to assert, and to demonstrate, that the Hebrew-Christian god-concept was better. It was not altogether a bad argument since, and in fact, the Christian religious came with a powerful, successful civilizational and civilizing structure.

In this sense, and certainly retrospectively, it is easy to see that Christian culture and its cultural economic and statesmanship enterprise had all the advantages.

And here is the essential point: the message of the Gospels, its core command, is take the Gospel to all the nations of the Earth.

It is not well understood though that the motive of “world domination”, and indeed the civilizing of the world, is a fundamental Hebrew notion. The process of the Hebrew revelation in history is, literally, to tame to heathen and yoke him up to God’s purposes.

One should, at the very least, have some awareness of what the 1948 establishment (by force mind you) of the Israeli state means for 1) hyper-religious Jews of a certain orientation and 2) ultra-zealous Christian Zionists. The Al-Aksa Flood attack was an attack against the prospect, now being planned, to rebuild the former Jewish Temple (on or near the Temple Mount) and to begin the ritual sacrifice all over again.

There are so many different, confusing and conflicting currents taking shape and having effect in our cultural world as the foundations of Christian culture (with attendant metaphysics) are undermined and rejected, on one side, but the civilizational impulse is still moving forward.

But early Christianity soon became Pauline. The insurrectionist element was tamed by Rome and its church.
The insurrectionist element in early Christianity was neutralised by the Roman church.
Christian culture became mainstream due to the power of Rome not to the political power of the message of Jesus.
Evangelism is not the core message. The core message is love your enemies and do good to them that hate you.
Zionism is a 19th century invention.

The civilising influence of Xianity will only move forward if we fight fascism.

[MikeNovack]

Zionism is a 19th century invention.

This forum section is about Christianity, not Judaism. But ....

1) What is the problem with a tribal religion in a multicultural world? Tribal religions EXPECT others to believe differently, to live by different rules, no problem. Canaan, where Judaism developed, was always multicultural over short distances and was on one end of the silk road.

This would more properly be part of a broader discussion about "tribalism", pro and con. Some tribes have a "tribal religion" but others do not. The Jews are an example of a tribe with a tribal religion. The Kurds are an example of a tribe without (there are Muslim Kurds, Christian Kurds, Jewish Kurds, and Yazidi Kurds)

2) The LATEST (modern) "wave" of Zionism late 19th Century. But if you look at Jewish history you will see previous waves. Have you ever been to a Pesach Seder? The traditional text is ancient. The final words are "next year in Jerusalem."

[Will Bouwman]

I assure you that Jesus and Krishna actually manifest themselves to the respective practitioners.

That's a bold claim, Gus. Would you say the same of Brahma or Allah?

[Immanuel Can]

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 needs everything, from somewhere. But it has nothing. There’s not a single thing it is capable of telling us about morality, because there’s not one single thing it commands us to do, think, believe, change…etc.

[Immanuel Can]

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.

It does not logically follow that if there is no God then morality cannot be objective nor that morality is non-existent.

Prove it. Just suggest one single imperative that secularism/subjectivism demands of us. Just one. Any one.

And if you can’t, you have every reason to believe I’m right. And if nobody else can help you out with that, you know I’m right.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I assure you that Jesus and Krishna actually manifest themselves to the respective practitioners.

That's a bold claim, Gus. Would you say the same of Brahma or Allah?

Yes, my errant disciple. But you must (try TRY!) to grasp my point: we deal with life, life is filtered to us, by the lenses of perception that are constructed for us, that we co-construct and employ. If there is some sort of divine power or consciousness, it can only communicate with us through our subjective construct, our subjective hook-up as it were.

Receive my multi-tiered blessing, m’boy. If possible, eat a bagel! Gut shabbes!

Your ever well-wisher,

AJ

[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.

It does not logically follow that if there is no God then morality cannot be objective nor that morality is non-existent.

Prove it. Just suggest one single imperative that secularism/subjectivism demands of us. Just one. Any one.

And if you can’t, you have every reason to believe I’m right. And if nobody else can help you out with that, you know I’m right.

No one has to "prove" something doesn't follow from an unsupported argument. It's up to you to prove that it logically follows that no God = morality cannot be objective or is non-existent. If you have a sound deductive argument making that case, then I'll listen.

In the meantime, I'll repost what I posted earlier from ChatGPT.

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

[Alexis Jacobi]

Just suggest one single imperative that secularism/subjectivism demands of us. Just one. Any one.

I got it!

To really REALLY please the Lord we must burn Immanuel at the stake!

Disprove that, suckers!