Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

I AM A STAR in the Terrestrial Gutter …

…shining out in Intentional Transcendental Love.

Atla, you still paying attention?!

[Atla]

I AM A STAR in the Terrestrial Gutter …

…shining out in Intentional Transcendental Love.

Atla, you still paying attention?!

Yeah but you won't like it. We established earlier that you seem to be rather emotionally stunted, you don't seem to be very good at normal everyday human love.

So maybe you're trying to compensate with this Intentional Transcendental Love thing. Unless of course it's real, and you can show that it exists. I haven't encountered it.

There's the impersonal compassion of the Buddhists, but that's not transcendental and not really love.

Jesus's love was a lot more like love I guess, still rather impersonal because it was love for everyone, but I still don't see the transcendence.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

I do not think that skeptical juice has been drained. I think that Immanuel as Evangelical Christian apologist, trying to convert people at a fundamental metaphysical level, is himself an over-extracted orange rind that should be composted.

You are never never, not ever, not in 10,000 years, going to succeed to get people to “see” the sense in ultimate Christian metaphysics by haranguing them with tortured views of “original mating pairs”, Noah’s Arks and frankly the entire range of Stories and symbolism that a Bible literalist is intensely invested in.

But frankly the most difficult part in all of this is in the difficulty in convincing people that there is, or that there really should be, an ultimate, absolutist metaphysics that could be presented (to philosophy-driven sorts) who do not accept that “metaphysics” is a genuine category.

Consider Martin who says that an entire mental construction became impossible to maintain when it became obvious that there was absolutely no evidence for “it” in Nature.

Try to get him (I mean such a one as him) to get back on board with a giant metaphysical project with all sorts of implications for human life, including vast, and ultimate, metaphysical battles between those Giant Forces fighting it out like King Kong and Godzilla — titanic consequential ideas.

You've never seen Skeptikal Juice TM like mine Alexis. IC certainly hasn't. You can appreciate it, he can not, possibly.

American Primitive wooden literal fundamentalism wins hands down of course. The race to the bottom with fear and loathing cannot be lost. The mob rules, because political geniuses like Trump have to court them. Our next prime minister is his buddy Farage. Unless Sir Keir scourges the seas of boat people.

I'm your worst nightmare : ) I WANT to know that intentional transcendent Love is the ground of being more than anything else. I would bow the knee if They were. But They are not. For if They were it would be obvious. All would know. All would know that all will be well for all by the power of intentional transcendent Love. Intentional transcendent Love would be competent in the afterlife. Nothing that has ever felt suffering would not be lifted up.

That's sceptical juice squirted from one direction.

From 180 degrees here's the other. The God of Jesus, to whom I extend the greatest possible good will as a bloke, to the maximum possible historicity shorn of all unnatural claims, is not intentional transcendent Love. Intentional transcendent Love could not require a human sacrifice, suicide by cop. Intentional transcendent Love would not be misanthropic. Intentional transcendent Love would not distract us with meaningless sin and forgiveness. I have the highest possible regard for him as the greatest single human pivot toward social justice. Which was all but abandoned after Jerusalem fell. It didn't take anywhere else. Holding all things in common. There has been no social justice since that isn't the poor relation of civilization.

There is no epistemological warrant - evidence - for justified true belief, i.e. knowledge, of intentional transcendent Love as the ground of being. Let alone the sad, violent, arbitrary, inadequate creature of our barbarous, terrified imaginations in the Abrahamic religions. But that's not going to stop anybody believing. Is it Alexis? You are in the same gutter as IC, but at least you're looking at the stars.

Intentional transcendent love was embodied in Jesus Christ, Buddha, Socrates, and many comparatively or utterly obscure individuals. I wonder at you if you are unable to detect one or more of those individuals. Greyfriars Bobby?

No . it . wasn't. Or I couldn't say that. Greyfriars Bobby?! Is sacred. Along with Gelert.

PS And it's Love. Everything those guys thought, said and did was natural. Human. Flawed. But bloody good. Of their milieus it couldn't possibly be bettered. The very best of human love of their times and places. Transcendent of the, 'beyond or above the range of normal... human experience:... surpassing the ordinary; exceptional:' but not 'existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the material universe', not 'beyond or above the range physical human experience'.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

I AM A STAR in the Terrestrial Gutter …

…shining out in Intentional Transcendental Love.

Atla, you still paying attention?!

: )

[Atla]

Oh my.. I think I'm starting to.. I think I'm starting to feel it.. I'm starting to feel it!! ..

I wonder if AJ is now sitting in his room trying to radiate* Transcendental Love, concentrating really hard on it. And is waiting for us to say that we felt a sudden burst of love or something.

(*Apollo is associated with the Sun, after all)

[Alexis Jacobi]

Atla! This is wonderful news! A thanksgiving donation to The Course will cement your gains.

[Atla]

I notice the usual total lack of an attempt to demonstrate the existence of this metaphysical-transcendental reality to us.

[promethean75]

"No progress in metaphysics: “If it were the case, it would need a great deal of explaining to vindicate philosophy. For while physics has produced libraries of well established results (and chemistry and biology yet more libraries), we can look in vain for trustworthy books entitled Established Truths of Metaphysics or A Handbook of Philosophical Facts." - Peter Hacker

[Belinda]

You've never seen Skeptikal Juice TM like mine Alexis. IC certainly hasn't. You can appreciate it, he can not, possibly.

American Primitive wooden literal fundamentalism wins hands down of course. The race to the bottom with fear and loathing cannot be lost. The mob rules, because political geniuses like Trump have to court them. Our next prime minister is his buddy Farage. Unless Sir Keir scourges the seas of boat people.

I'm your worst nightmare : ) I WANT to know that intentional transcendent Love is the ground of being more than anything else. I would bow the knee if They were. But They are not. For if They were it would be obvious. All would know. All would know that all will be well for all by the power of intentional transcendent Love. Intentional transcendent Love would be competent in the afterlife. Nothing that has ever felt suffering would not be lifted up.

That's sceptical juice squirted from one direction.

From 180 degrees here's the other. The God of Jesus, to whom I extend the greatest possible good will as a bloke, to the maximum possible historicity shorn of all unnatural claims, is not intentional transcendent Love. Intentional transcendent Love could not require a human sacrifice, suicide by cop. Intentional transcendent Love would not be misanthropic. Intentional transcendent Love would not distract us with meaningless sin and forgiveness. I have the highest possible regard for him as the greatest single human pivot toward social justice. Which was all but abandoned after Jerusalem fell. It didn't take anywhere else. Holding all things in common. There has been no social justice since that isn't the poor relation of civilization.

There is no epistemological warrant - evidence - for justified true belief, i.e. knowledge, of intentional transcendent Love as the ground of being. Let alone the sad, violent, arbitrary, inadequate creature of our barbarous, terrified imaginations in the Abrahamic religions. But that's not going to stop anybody believing. Is it Alexis? You are in the same gutter as IC, but at least you're looking at the stars.

Intentional transcendent love was embodied in Jesus Christ, Buddha, Socrates, and many comparatively or utterly obscure individuals. I wonder at you if you are unable to detect one or more of those individuals. Greyfriars Bobby?

No . it . wasn't. Or I couldn't say that. Greyfriars Bobby?! Is sacred. Along with Gelert.

PS And it's Love. Everything those guys thought, said and did was natural. Human. Flawed. But bloody good. Of their milieus it couldn't possibly be bettered. The very best of human love of their times and places. Transcendent of the, 'beyond or above the range of normal... human experience:... surpassing the ordinary; exceptional:' but not 'existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the material universe', not 'beyond or above the range physical human experience'.

I see 'existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the material universe',by "transcending" you mean transcending the material universe: I assumed that by transcending you meant transcending human fear,selfishness. and greed. Got it now.

i take it for granted there is no supernatural way of being or existence. That is the windmill you tilt at. What a Quixotic waste of time when right thinking people can be using philosophy to make the world a better place

The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings. You are not a superstitious man so why bother with superstitions like the supernatural!

[Alexis Jacobi]

"No progress in metaphysics: “If it were the case, it would need a great deal of explaining to vindicate philosophy. For while physics has produced libraries of well established results (and chemistry and biology yet more libraries), we can look in vain for trustworthy books entitled Established Truths of Metaphysics or A Handbook of Philosophical Facts." - Peter Hacker

I recognize Hacker’s brilliance as both a leading Wittgenstein scholar and a philosopher in his own right. I also think his critique of contemporary “scientistic” strands of neuroscience is devastating. Yet I can’t help but think that Hacker falls victim to what is an unfortunate trend in contemporary philosophy: namely, the trend of “being against metaphysics.” Nothing could be worse, in my view, than abandoning the pursuit of the great “transcendental” concepts: being, unity, truth, goodness and beauty, among others, as somehow determinative of the world we inhabit. Pace Hacker, I submit that weighty topics like these are what philosophy—and metaphysics—is, really. I also submit that there probably isn’t as much disparity between Hacker’s Wittgensteinian philosophical motivations and the great metaphysicians as the Oxford don thinks. We should be for metaphysics for the same reason we should be for philosophy—to be vulnerable, creative and dedicated enough to do the hard work of telling the truth.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Intentional transcendent love was embodied in Jesus Christ, Buddha, Socrates, and many comparatively or utterly obscure individuals. I wonder at you if you are unable to detect one or more of those individuals. Greyfriars Bobby?

No . it . wasn't. Or I couldn't say that. Greyfriars Bobby?! Is sacred. Along with Gelert.

PS And it's Love. Everything those guys thought, said and did was natural. Human. Flawed. But bloody good. Of their milieus it couldn't possibly be bettered. The very best of human love of their times and places. Transcendent of the, 'beyond or above the range of normal... human experience:... surpassing the ordinary; exceptional:' but not 'existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the material universe', not 'beyond or above the range physical human experience'.

I see 'existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the material universe',by "transcending" you mean transcending the material universe: I assumed that by transcending you meant transcending human fear,selfishness. and greed. Got it now.

i take it for granted there is no supernatural way of being or existence. That is the windmill you tilt at. What a Quixotic waste of time when right thinking people can be using philosophy to make the world a better place

The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings. You are not a superstitious man so why bother with superstitions like the supernatural!

Why would you assume I mean something other than what the word actually means, unless I was using it metaphorically?

I'm tilting at none of your particular windmills. I am tilting at a somewhat fundamental windmill of believers. It's a waste of your time as you can't understand, you're entirely missing the point. Whilst your busy making the world a better place. How do you compare with the Chinese Communist Party?

There is no fault in us. We're the very best nature can do. I bother identifying enormous unidentified faults of Christianity, let alone worse, because they're in plain sight. Somebody has to do it. For the sake of the completeness of the philosophy of religion. I've had to work them out for myself as no one else has. A most worthwhile endeavour.

[Will Bouwman]

"No progress in metaphysics: “If it were the case, it would need a great deal of explaining to vindicate philosophy. For while physics has produced libraries of well established results (and chemistry and biology yet more libraries), we can look in vain for trustworthy books entitled Established Truths of Metaphysics or A Handbook of Philosophical Facts." - Peter Hacker

Metaphysics is just what you do once you have a bunch of data to explain. You don't have to explain data, you can just seek patterns from which you might create useful formulae. Stripped down to its underpants, that is physics, the shut up and calculate variety. Any clothing you put on naked physics is really metaphysics. So you do the measurements, do the sums and build bridges or rockets depending on your needs. Progress in metaphysics, is essentially Popper's falsificationism, if you can eliminate useless conjectures, you might save a bit of time.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Any clothing you put on naked physics is really metaphysics.

And clothe you must, dear child.

As a matter of fact I am in extra-physical processes of adopting all of you as my metaphysical children.

Responsibilities? Yes, many. But extraordinary benefits!

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Any clothing you put on naked physics is really metaphysics.

And clothe you must, dear child.

As a matter of fact I am in extra-physical processes of adopting all of you as my metaphysical children.

Responsibilities? Yes, many. But extraordinary benefits!

Hi Mom. Why did you go downstairs to a friend and leave me on the kitchen table, only to be summoned, panic stricken, when I hit the floor and screamed?

[Alexis Jacobi]

I’d left my ciggies on the table, you insolent brat! Enough of this drama …