Christianity

[Walker]

If you wish to say that the Gods of the Hindus are all the same as the Christian God, then whatever.

I can't imagine why I would ever wish to say what you said, in place of what I said.

That might be a bridge too far, so for the moment, let's leave what most of us perceive as polytheism out of (we might later ant to revisit Hinduism)

Walker, I realize that we might be wronging you. The key is reciprocity. You want us to say "god" instead of "your god". Do you feel that way for all of us monotheists? Do feel Muslims and Jews and Yazidis and Sikhs and Parsis, and Baha'is, ...., and Longhouse followers....would you say of all of us non-Christian monotheists are ALL just worshiping god. How about the Panentheists, god is also in all things and the Pantheists, there is nothing separate from god.

If you say that, then I apologize for saying "your god". The reason, if there can be an excuse, would be from our experience of rarely, if ever, encountering a Christian who did reciprocate in that way.

Beginning with the words "we," and "you," is a rather tired old pile that means crap is afoot, just so you know.

‘Tis an attachment to the duality baked into the DNA that requires a taxonomy to arrange an ordering of the most to the least encompassing. God is the nameless thing of a thousand names, detected by the mind sense which is activated by organic configurations of the brain receiver that can self-repair to an extent, that detect The God (God) in a thousand* things, depending on the capacity and the degree to which that capacity has been compromised through trauma or corruption of the receiver.

From my view and capacity, God can be called The Supreme Ordering Principle of the Universe. The problem with naming something is that folks misinfer from that, what God is not ... because of attachment to duality.

(I bet Gary wishes he could have said that in place of his familiar rut, how 'bout it Gary)




* A figurative number that translates into, a lot.

[Walker]

Not sure why you are on a philosophy forum.

Gary, as The Arbiter of Philosophy, you will be required to wear a funny hat.

That shouldn't be a problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bQnxlHZsjY

[Belinda]

Why do you suggest Allah’s perfect? Because that’s what Muslims claim? But look at what he approves, and look at what his most ardent and committed followers do today, in the service of Allah? And look at his “prophet”: by Islamic accounts, very, very far from being an admirable human being. Why do you call Allah perfect, then? Where’s the evidence for that?

Yes, they do: but there’s a stark difference, and one we must note: those who follow Allah most passionately are murderers, rapists, terrorists, thieves, slave owners, wife abusers, and such. That’s what their ideology requires. Now, flip the script: those who follow Jesus most closely are kind, merciful, lawful, charitable, generous, longsuffering, patient, humble…and these values, in each case, are reflected in the conduct and lives of their founders.

The more people are genuinely Christian, the more peace, mercy and justice there will be; the more people are devoted to Islam…well, you can see the results.

I think you made up those statistics Immanuel.

I can’t see that I listed any statistics, so I’m not sure what your objection is. The facts are evident to anybody who sees the daily news, or has the most basic familiarity with those worldviews. And if you know what each religion teaches, you know it’s the truth.

You wrote: "The more people are genuinely Christian, the more peace, mercy and justice there will be; the more people are devoted to Islam…well, you can see the results."
Many people think as you do. many people dispute your claim and name it islamophobia. Your correlation lacked quantification so it's opinion not fact.

[Belinda]

This passage strongly condemns ritual without moral integrity, especially failure to uphold social justice.[/color]

Precisely, the message of the prophets. Be careful, however, to keep lines in context. Thus usually the prophets are not condemning the rituals per se but more like "they do the rituals but at the same time do evil". In other words, that the sacrificial rituals without good behavior useless. That's not quite the same as "don't bother with the rituals".

HOWEVER -- the sages were able to go there (not the sages of mishna times but the later commentaries that are the talmud) because the Temple had been destroyed. Thus no longer able to bring the ritual sacrifices. So went from "do the rituals AND the good behaviors" to "do the good behaviors AND note unable to do the rituals"

That Judaism is a religion of praxis is well known. However praxis is a lot besides Jewish ethnic ritual.
Isaiah 1:11–17

Is what I wrote so you have misrepresented me a little.

If were to be accepted as a Jew I presume I'd be required to undertake the ethnic rituals AND the good behaviours; not so?

[Belinda]

Yeah. Go for the typo. It's all you have for an argument anyway.

You’re going to find a way to change the subject and get away from the moral bankruptcy of secularism, aren’t you? You’re just determined to find something that will let you off the hook.

But you know. You’ve seen it now. And you’re never going to unsee it.

You can stifle the conversation, clog it with abuse and irrelevancies, like an overpacked drain; but you know. There’s no escaping it. And we both know it.

There is no "bankruptcy" of secularism. The only bankruptcy is the imagined one that Christians get into when they ponder the possibility that there's no big daddy in the sky to guide Santa's sleigh--and the rest of the nonsense you all prescribe to.

I think Immanuel's point is that the human is too much of a sinner to be able to go it alone without the authority of supernatural being. Maybe that is the case. In view of the atrocities we witness daily that include not only man's inhumanity to man but also man's stupid irresponsibility to the environment man seems to be unsuited to autonomy.

The secularist argues that there is no supernatural authority and what passes for supernatural authority is always a political lie told by a tyrant.

A third option is to see lights in the prevailing darkness, and with the help of sages such as Jesus, Muhammad, Socrates, Confucius, Buddha ,and others we can hope and trust than man is capable of improvement.

[Alexis Jacobi]

IC wrote: You’re going to find a way to change the subject and get away from the moral bankruptcy of secularism, aren’t you? You’re just determined to find something that will let you off the hook.

There is no "bankruptcy" of secularism. The only bankruptcy is the imagined one that Christians get into when they ponder the possibility that there's no big daddy in the sky to guide Santa's sleigh--and the rest of the nonsense you all prescribe to.

Waldo Frank, a philosopher from the early 20th century, noted that a vast range of false certainties collapsed with the advent of the scientific age. And even the basic axioms of the original scientific postulates were overturned and revised.

Once, there was an”intelligible picture” of the World and there existed a sense that it was all neatly ordered and each element hung together. The World was God’s creation. The end of Man was determined by his willingness to obey the Will of God. If ethics and morality were knotty, so be it, but in most arenas the system was intelligible.

Like it or not, the cohesive picture has been shattered. The evidence is that no one on the forum can any longer go along with believing The Old Story.

Presently, there is no Cohesive Picture that is capable of describing The World from top to bottom — from Origin to End. And though it might be very attractive to put all doubts aside in a Herculean “I will to believe!” manoeuvre, for a great many this option is not available because it is in discord with their sense of what is true.

And what is true? That a view of The World (manifest universe) is expanding to inconceivable dimensions. Even the Established Physics Model is now requiring revision. Even those who had created a New Picture are now on uncertain ground. It is not doubt that is being settled, but even doubt expands.

If there is a Ground to reground on, it cannot be defined at this juncture.

This unsettling Picture is the real picture that describes Reality.

Set against this, all former religious and spiritual models, look pretty flimsy. But it is that flimsiness that describes man’s internal state.

However, I have developed my special Recovering Certainty Tablets® that can be used in conjunction with my Ever-Grounding Elixir® to restore your sense of cohesion in a dissolving world! Tired of witnessing every former stability vanish like wisps of smoke in an explosive supernova? Can’t even understand yourself much less the world on the verge of psychosis? My Tablets and my Elixir will help!

[Immanuel Can]

I think you made up those statistics Immanuel.

I can’t see that I listed any statistics, so I’m not sure what your objection is. The facts are evident to anybody who sees the daily news, or has the most basic familiarity with those worldviews. And if you know what each religion teaches, you know it’s the truth.

You wrote: "The more people are genuinely Christian, the more peace, mercy and justice there will be; the more people are devoted to Islam…well, you can see the results."
Many people think as you do. many people dispute your claim

But you can see that they’re wrong. Only people who do as I have described are walking in the steps of Jesus Christ. Those who do evil are not. There’s no possibility of disputing that, really. If you know Jesus Christ, who He was and what He taught, and take it seriously, you’re going to be the best sort of person. If you take only the name “Christian,” and do not do what He says, then you’re only a hypocrite — but our hypocrisy is not fault of His, of course.

and name it islamophobia.

“Islamophobia” is an interesting bit of propaganda. It’s a little bit like “rapophobia,” or “slaveryphobia,” or “murderphobia.” It tries to imply that you’re irrational, and perhaps that you’re mentally ill (i.e. “phobic”), for having an aversion to horrible things.

But consider Mo. How would anybody who makes himself reproduce Mo’s behaviour and teaching — as alleged and described by Islamists themselves -- be a good person? Would it be the pillaging and mass murders that attract you? The taking of a child bride? The wife-beatings? The enslavements and killings of Christians and Jews? And there’s even much, much worse described of Mo in that Haddiths than is delivered by the Koran. And if you knew Islam, you’d know that.

But we don’t know much about Islam. That’s why we fall for the “Islamophobia” propaganda.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The secularist argues that there is no supernatural authority and what passes for supernatural authority is always a political lie told by a tyrant.

First, those who argue against IC are arguing less against him than against the Former Model which, in them, cannot be recovered without a sort of drugged and forced resolution of The Problem.

In truth, if such Supernatural Authority exists, well okay! but even if that is so all choices and decisions are still, at every moment and every day, in our own hands. So let there be this Authority but I still must choose every one of my actions.

The interesting thing is that now, today, it is only a Tyrant telling lies that could present a Unifying Plan to falsely reassemble all those dissolving certainties.

[Immanuel Can]

You’re going to find a way to change the subject and get away from the moral bankruptcy of secularism, aren’t you? You’re just determined to find something that will let you off the hook.

But you know. You’ve seen it now. And you’re never going to unsee it.

You can stifle the conversation, clog it with abuse and irrelevancies, like an overpacked drain; but you know. There’s no escaping it. And we both know it.

There is no "bankruptcy" of secularism. The only bankruptcy is the imagined one that Christians get into when they ponder the possibility that there's no big daddy in the sky to guide Santa's sleigh--and the rest of the nonsense you all prescribe to.

I think Immanuel's point...

Why don’t you just take the point I’m actually making: that secularism is bankrupt? Why must you change it into something else? Is it to escape the obvious, namely, that I’m quite right about that?

Maybe that is the case. In view of the atrocities we witness daily that include not only man's inhumanity to man but also man's stupid irresponsibility to the environment man seems to be unsuited to autonomy.

Be cautious with that thought: we might have trouble in actualizing our autonomy in good ways — I grant you that — but it does not mean that surrendering that autonomy is guaranteed to be better. To surrender it to another human being, for example, is just so shift the burden of directing you life from yourself to another sinner as fallen as you. How is that better? Will he care for you more than you care for yourself? Will he attend to your moral responsibilities better than you can? Why would you suppose so?

And it’s not better at all — in fact, manifestly worse — if we surrender our autonomy to a collective. For a “collective” does not even possess a unified conscience or a unified self-awareness. “Collectives,” are mobs. Mobs have no awareness of autonomy. They flow wherever the fluid dynamics of their solidarity take them, and notoriously, often into hideous collective acts.

The secularist argues that there is no supernatural authority and what passes for supernatural authority is always a political lie told by a tyrant.

Ironically, the secularist also believes that “political lies” and “tyranny” are not objectively wrong. And since the liars and tyrants are subjectively happy with their choices, what’s the secular comeback to them?

A third option is to see lights in the prevailing darkness, and with the help of sages such as Jesus, Muhammad, Socrates, Confucius, Buddha ,and others we can hope and trust than man is capable of improvement.

But which is a “sage,” and which is an evil being? Socrates leads us to suicide for the sake of the city. Mohammed, to murder, pillage, brutality and rape. Buddha to extinction of the very essence of our own being…and none of them prescribes to us the same course, either. Since they disagree on everything, will the mere following of “a guru,” whether it’s Confucius or Caligula, guarantee us moral betterment? Why would we think so?

There’s only one trustworthy moral touchstone. And there’s only one who doesn’t merely demand our discipline to do it, but offers us help and rescue as well. And that is Jesus Christ.

[MikeNovack]

Beginning with the words "we," and "you," is a rather tired old pile that means crap is afoot, just so you know.

‘Tis an attachment to the duality baked into the DNA that requires a taxonomy to arrange an ordering of the most to the least encompassing. God is the nameless thing of a thousand names, detected by the mind sense which is activated by organic configurations of the brain receiver that can self-repair to an extent, that detect The God (God) in a thousand* things, depending on the capacity and the degree to which that capacity has been compromised through trauma or corruption of the receiver.
From my view and capacity, God can be called The Supreme Ordering Principle of the Universe. The problem with naming something is that folks misinfer from that, what God is not ... because of attachment to duality.

With THAT understanding of god, I assume you are reciprocating with all monotheists, panentheists, and pantheists. For that matter, then Hinduism should not be a bridge too far once grasped the concept of "maya" (the illusion/delusion that prevents perceiving the true oneness)

Sorry, but the "you"/"we" is because I cannot utter "Christians worship god" (as opposed to "Christians worship their god") as a true statement. Like I said, rarely encountered a Christian expressing that kind of reciprocity.. If THEY (the Christians, most of them) don't believe I (a non-Christian monotheist) am also worshiping the same god, how can I not take them at their word.

[Immanuel Can]

...a vast range of false certainties collapsed with the advent of the scientific age.

Yes, it seems so. But not all of them, apparently; and it was not the religious who were going to uncover the many delusions that “The Enlightenment” had permitted to break out in society, along with the myths it killed; it was first the manifest destruction of two world wars and others like Vietnam that killed that optimism, but then the Postmodern critics came and did their work in pointing out the delusions of early modernity. Secularism may have sidelined for a time the religious critiques, but it didn’t solve all man’s delusions, it seems.

Presently, there is no Cohesive Picture that is capable of describing The World from top to bottom — from Origin to End.

Well, there is, actually. There always has been. But Atheists in the West have certainly rejected the whole concept that there can even be such a thing. They’re trapped by their own relativism, as a result, and can’t find any secure “metanarrative” on which to found anything. So they seize on false narratives — even narratives that they, in their more aware moments, would realize were implausible — and cling to them, instead: like “the myth of perpetual progress” or “the myth of the triumph of the proletariat,” or just “the myth of the just society,” and they worship those myths with even more fervour than nominally religious types ever gave to their own religions.

And what is true?

For a secularist? Nothing, it seems. Even reality itself is now up for grabs, they suppose — though remarkably, they still continue to experience birth, life and death at the same rates as they always did. Gravity and entropy still have their regular claims on them. And the world still turns as it always did. The moon’s still over their heads, and the waters are beneath their feet…but for them, all of it has become somewhat unreal, somewhat “quantum” in their thinking, and ultimately up for grabs.

But that’s all in their heads, of course.

[Alexis Jacobi]

You’re just adding kindling to your pyre, Immanuel!

But that’s all in their heads, of course.

As is so much, it seems …

[Walker]

Beginning with the words "we," and "you," is a rather tired old pile that means crap is afoot, just so you know.

‘Tis an attachment to the duality baked into the DNA that requires a taxonomy to arrange an ordering of the most to the least encompassing. God is the nameless thing of a thousand names, detected by the mind sense which is activated by organic configurations of the brain receiver that can self-repair to an extent, that detect The God (God) in a thousand* things, depending on the capacity and the degree to which that capacity has been compromised through trauma or corruption of the receiver.
From my view and capacity, God can be called The Supreme Ordering Principle of the Universe. The problem with naming something is that folks misinfer from that, what God is not ... because of attachment to duality.

With THAT understanding of god, I assume you are reciprocating with all monotheists, panentheists, and pantheists. For that matter, then Hinduism should not be a bridge too far once grasped the concept of "maya" (the illusion/delusion that prevents perceiving the true oneness)

Sorry, but the "you"/"we" is because I cannot utter "Christians worship god" (as opposed to "Christians worship their god") as a true statement. Like I said, rarely encountered a Christian expressing that kind of reciprocity.. If THEY (the Christians, most of them) don't believe I (a non-Christian monotheist) am also worshiping the same god, how can I not take them at their word.

Well, I for one am amazed at the patience and kindness of Christian folks who have seen the light and need to wade through the darkness of others to part the curtains of ignorance that obscure what Christians know in their bones to be true.

God is not the same for different human views because the human view itself has the capacity to shape perception that motivates human reaction, according to individual capacity and corrupting effects upon that capacity, which is the basis for the assertion that we each live in a separate reality. Reference Heisenberg. Everyone is playing with the same deck, shaping the same thing … God.

Your beef is with Christians who say that their interpretation of the One And Only God as revealed in The Holy Bible and to each individual, which is the truth of God revealed to the capacity of human comprehension, is the one, true interpretation and perception of God.

Well, making that case or not making that case should not rest on the fact that the claim is being made, but rather, for the reasons that the claim is being made, and that’s where refutations of Christianity fall short, because assertions of relativity cannot refute Christianity’s preponderance of human inherent truths correlating with Christian truth, which is why Christianity persists like a rock while protestations of relativity flutter about like butterflies on a summer afternoon, soon to disappear and reappear while Christianity remains, enduring the same ignorance of each new generation.

[Alexis Jacobi]

With THAT understanding of god, I assume you are reciprocating with all monotheists, panentheists, and pantheists. For that matter, then Hinduism should not be a bridge too far once grasped the concept of "maya" (the illusion/delusion that prevents perceiving the true oneness).

In respect to Walker’s philosophy of religion: you are very right. His view is far more Vedantic than, say, Evangelical Christian.

With that said, and if one seeks a mostly more coherent Picture of Reality through a lens that allows for a wide range of spiritual practices that correspond, in their way, to mystic discipleship by Jesus Christ or the Angels of God, Vedanta is just that picture.

And frankly a “science of ethics” based in a profound moral sense is also expressed in the Vedantic (Hindu-esque) schools.

Without desiring to point unfairly at Walker’s “fragmentation” (my view is that we all live in various levels or depths of fragmentation) his effort to reconcile neo-Vedantic perspective with elements in an Isaiahan perspective (“My thoughts are not your thoughts” etc.) has veritable psychological value.

Sort of an incipient phase of achieving a holistic spiritual grounding … when realistically everything is falling apart.

[Walker]

During periods of extreme Christian persecution (evil attacking good, i.e., everything falling apart which happens in the best of times and the worst of times), good goes underground since one divine martyr is enough, and not everyone is a knight in shining armour.