Christianity

[Will Bouwman]

Will is the abuser.

Well⁹ yeah, but Gus and I go back a long way and he is way too familiar and sharp to be upset by anything I say. The other fucknuts though, are too bonkers to realise they're fucknuts.

[Will Bouwman]

Goedel as an analogy with his 2bd theory of incompleteness. I have nothing to [be] humble about.

PS So, what ought I to be be humble about?

Well, not admitting to having anything to be humble about isn't a good start. It doesn't get better with you making this about you. Anyway, Goedel's incomplteness theorem is something I kinda think I should have a better handle on, but it's maths so I really struggle give a monkey's. You would be doing me a favour if you could explain why I should.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Will is the abuser.

Well⁹ yeah, but Gus and I go back a long way and he is way too familiar and sharp to be upset by anything I say. The other fucknuts though, are too bonkers to realise they're fucknuts.

Understood, thank you. And, er, yairse. That could include me of course.

Goedel as an analogy with his 2bd theory of incompleteness. I have nothing to [be] humble about.

PS So, what ought I to be be humble about?

Well, not admitting to having anything to be humble about isn't a good start. It doesn't get better with you making this about you. Anyway, Goedel's incomplteness theorem is something I kinda think I should have a better handle on, but it's maths so I really struggle give a monkey's. You would be doing me a favour if you could explain why I should.

I have everything to be humble about I'm sure, but my identifying the main fallacy of Christianity, that God is love, when He isn't by multiple second order country mile criteria, isn't one of them.

Gödel’s theorems come down to our level as, "even in the most rigorous systems, some truths will always lie beyond reach". Systems generate truth established by means of accepted truths, and many are unprovable. There's no end to it. In mathematics, metaphysics, but not theology. There are no theological axioms. But we can nonetheless posit God and, that according to the Church, in it's NT, He is love. Morality beyond the merely metaphysical says otherwise.

PS Alexis and Richard Weaver both appear to 'elevate' morality to the metaphysical, to me, when it isn't at all, for me. BUT it is more powerful than liberal appeals to morality, which ignore the traditional, conservative elements (of morality). I am a Geoist, therefore I am a 'Radical Communist' by his criteria. For that to catch on, we need to appeal to conservatives above all, and we've failed miserably and terminally; the liberal, progressive economic experiment is dead, even in Europe. Pride parades are a poignant sideshow. God is part of the natural, dominant, conservative moralities. Again we commies have nothing to replace Him with. Which is why I'm an atheist republican who wholeheartedly shouted 'God Save The King!' at His Majesty's second proclamation.

[MikeNovack]

Gödel’s theorems come down to our level as, "even in the most rigorous systems, some truths will always lie beyond reach".

Not exactly, not all formal systems. He proved this for systems with sufficient "complexity" to map arithmetic. Formal systems lacking enough "complexity" top map arithmetic could be complete and consistent.

For example a small finite geometry could be complete and consistent.

And has anybody been trying to express metaphysics as a formal system since Spinoza.

[Immanuel Can]

I came here several years ago, labouring under the impression that if I were going to find intelligent skeptics anywhere, it was most likely to be on a philosophy site.

My impression? You never actually explained what the purpose of Christian religious conversion is or should be.

You'll have to remind me when it was that you asked that. I don't recall you ever did.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

The corrective movement" is usually called reactionary. You appear to be a reactionary Conservative.

No. That perspective is actually one constructed by a specific radicalism (less concerned about essences, absolutes, strict (er) rules and boundaries). Ur-conservatism defines its metaphysics as “normal” “necessary” “good” “life-affirming”.

And I am not “one of them” necessarily. I grew up in California radicalism. I merely said that I became interested in their philosophical (and metaphysical) positions.

Correctives, according to them (and now according to me) are not best described by the term “reactionary”. Words like “grounding” “regrounding” and other such terms are better.

In a Nietzschean sense it would also entail self-initiated and directed explorations based on “recovery of self”.

There is no quintessence in this relative world . Jesus Christ is believed and trusted by Christians to be the unique and embodied quintessence of good. Alexis' choice of metaphysical explanation is ripe for hijacking by reactionary Conservatives who claim to own the quintessence of good whereas political liberals' multicultural bias is less conceited. Vanity, Alexis, is not the way to go.

You are right! Because quintessences are purely metaphysical and grasped intellectually (Intellectus).

“Jesus Christ” is Logos. But Logos is not Jesus Christ. NT Christianity is completely insufficient (seen from the perspective of the fuller possibilities of rigorous metaphysical positions). “Jesus Christ” confuses a great deal that requires clarification. (These are my own views).

Jesus Christ has no phallus. This seems like a stupid thing to say but it is important (in my view).

More honestly (?) Jesus and Mary are better grasped if understood to be very old god-forms: Osiris and Isis.

These are symbols but they have all sorts of resonances psychically, spiritually. “Meaning” coalesces around them.

Of course JC had a phallus! He was born not created . He was subject to death like the rest of us. He was a man . JC had to cope with a nasty political milieu. like many other men of his time and place in Palestine of the Roman Empire.

Osiris and Isis were never understood to have walked about or been incarnate .

I think when you say " Jesus and Mary are better grasped if understood to be very old god-forms: Osiris and Isis. " you refer to psychological archetypes.

Bravo Belinda!

What intrigues me is that Alexis, possibly knowingly, reaches in to the murky paradoxical machinery of theology with the sodding great spanner of logic. If Jesus were God incarnate, aka the Logos, all of the meta-infinite Logos could not have collapsed in to a scandalously particular Holy spermatozoon, once between the eternities on our little infinitesimal dung heap. And no, the Logos doesn't (i.e. wouldn't) have a willy. But Jesus does (i.e. would). Still.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I came here several years ago, labouring under the impression that if I were going to find intelligent skeptics anywhere, it was most likely to be on a philosophy site.

My impression? You never actually explained what the purpose of Christian religious conversion is or should be.

You'll have to remind me when it was that you asked that. I don't recall you ever did.

I am not responsible for arranging the content of your apologetic (preaching) endeavors. I simply followed up again on that particular post wherein you described what you do here and why you are here.

As I said: it appears your effort was to sharpen the sword of your arguments against skeptics (those unlikely to ever be moved toward Christian conversion).

I pointed out that “You never actually explained what the purpose of Christian religious conversion is or should be”.

[Immanuel Can]

My impression? You never actually explained what the purpose of Christian religious conversion is or should be.

You'll have to remind me when it was that you asked that. I don't recall you ever did.

I am not responsible for arranging the content of your apologetic (preaching) endeavors.

You seem to think you are. You seem to think I owe you an explanation for which you never asked.

No wonder I no longer take you seriously. You're not even thinking.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

I'm sorely tempted to un-Foe IC so that he can respond to the intelligence that God is not love.

[Dubious]

I'm sorely tempted to un-Foe IC so that he can respond to the intelligence that God is not love.

Not only is god NOT love; he has long résumé equal to that of Vlad the Impaler, Genghis Khan, Hitler and Stalin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opaT5qP ... =12&t=162s

When pondering a litany of criminal acts by god, it's more than ironic, including perverse, that theists still adamantly insist you can't claim to be moral unless sanctioned by god and the bible meaning an objective morality, though certainly none of it would be the kind of objective most would find in any way acceptable or in the least desirable. The bible is, in fact, one of the most immoral books ever written.

[Belinda]

I'm sorely tempted to un-Foe IC so that he can respond to the intelligence that God is not love.

Not only is god NOT love; he has long résumé equal to that of Vlad the Impaler, Genghis Khan, Hitler and Stalin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opaT5qP ... =12&t=162s

When pondering a litany of criminal acts by god, it's more than ironic, including perverse, that theists still adamantly insist you can't claim to be moral unless sanctioned by god and the bible meaning an objective morality, though certainly none of it would be the kind of objective most would find in any way acceptable or in the least desirable. The bible is, in fact, one of the most immoral books ever written.

What every book, story, hero, chapter, verse, and sentence in The Bible?

[Will Bouwman]

I'm sorely tempted to un-Foe IC so that he can respond to the intelligence that God is not love.

You could just go on to William Lane Craig's 'Reasonable faith' website. There you will find the source of Mr Can's woeful arguments. Chief among them is divine command theory, according to which, whatever God commands is moral.

Not only is god NOT love; he has long résumé equal to that of Vlad the Impaler, Genghis Khan, Hitler and Stalin.

Well, as the late Christopher Hitchins pointed out, at least those nutters would let you die. God however, will torture forever anyone who is unconvinced by crappy evidence.

The bible is, in fact, one of the most immoral books ever written.

What every book, story, hero, chapter, verse, and sentence in The Bible?

Dan Barker makes a good case in 'God The most unpleasant character in all fiction.' Divine command theory does not just excuse genocide, war, slavery, murder and race, it declares them 'good' because God commands them.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

I'm sorely tempted to un-Foe IC so that he can respond to the intelligence that God is not love.

Not only is god NOT love; he has long résumé equal to that of Vlad the Impaler, Genghis Khan, Hitler and Stalin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opaT5qP ... =12&t=162s

When pondering a litany of criminal acts by god, it's more than ironic, including perverse, that theists still adamantly insist you can't claim to be moral unless sanctioned by god and the bible meaning an objective morality, though certainly none of it would be the kind of objective most would find in any way acceptable or in the least desirable. The bible is, in fact, one of the most immoral books ever written.

My critique isn't based on the insane extrapolation - not yours - that God is love, back to the OT.

Although Jesus not only believed in, from, that evil Bronze-Iron Age God, he believed he was Him.

And that same evil God, the best projection of developing morality over 2,000 years, resurges one hundred fold in the late C1st Church document, The Book of Revelation.

YHWH killed His millions.

The Logos his billions.

But we'll ignore all of that and the sick 'love' shown by the cheap, spiteful, murderous, small minded, loveless God of the NT who (Jesus back in business as the Logos?), according to The Good Doctor, assassinated King Herod Agrippa with parasitic worms, for the crime of allowing himself to be called a god.

As even liberal orthodox Christians do (not mere liberal Christian; I don't know why they bother), we must only discuss only the good Dr. Jekyll God, not the psycho Mr. Hyde God. We let Jesus hyperbolize with God the Bastard.

(IC can't of course, he barely sublimates his desires in that projection. Where do you draw the line Alexis?)

Jesus embraced the evolving God of the TaNaKh. As did I. And the rest of the whole cloth [nonsense, that is the whole cloth]. That the God revealed in the Bible is a seamless pragmatic garment of love. Who will kill you to save you. I was a liberal see? But we'll pretend that it's just hyperbole.

Jesus believed that He was doing the Father's will. To be the Paschal Lamb, the Lamb of God, pre-figured even before the Passover in Abraham and Isaac and back to Abel. To be voluntarily tortured, spat upon on, scourged for our healing, disgraced and bled out for [the last] half of those twelve hours.

(Love would not require that.)

Why?

For the forgiveness of sins. [Which poor sods like Dembski and WLC reel, crazed on the hook of.]

Love would not impute them, Love would not need to forgive. We do. It's human. Mammalian. Budgie. Crocodile. All higher animals, and that's an increasingly lower bar, have such protocols. There is nothing for Love to forgive. Transcendent Love would be competent and would therapy, level up, all that have suffered, in The Resurrection. In the next life. In heaven. As it will have done infinitely from eternity.

The Christian 'love' of God is the near perfect psychological distraction from the fact that God the Love does not exist. Does not ground being. If They do, They obliterate all traces, They create infinite nature from eternity as if they didn't. The ultimate denial. Not only do they have to submit to the prevenient laws of nature, they have to utterly debase Themselves out of the picture. Pathological humility or what! With not the slightest hint or need of the supernatural in any way; nature lacks nothing.

Why would Love do that? Why would Love abandon us to be cosmic orphans?

Unless Love is a meiotic bit of a bastard of course.

(And don't anyone dare mention an apple, or 'free will', or suffering's good for the soul, or anything ever said, no matter how speciously theodicean.)

[Alexis Jacobi]

In truth — here I will speak neither as a “believer” or as a “skeptic” about any matter related to “divinity” “God” “origin” and all of this …

… and I will say that when it is said “God loves you” (which of course has implications as to what love is, and what constitutes God’s love) that really only one essential thing is communicated:

It seems to me to be a promise:

“I can get you out of here, and by ‘here’ I mean Nature, this terrifying, bizarre, incomprehensible place where your being takes place”.

(Life, the World, Existence, “this vale of tears”, whatever).

It really cannot be anything else since no one is providentially protected from accident, earthquake, sting, bite, wound, suffering, death.

Ultimately, basically, the proposition is that if you “do” something (the base is in ethics) you may accrue the guarantee of Escape from a quite literally Cruel World, i.e. Nature.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Why would Love do that? Why would Love abandon us to be cosmic orphans?

For fuck’s sake Martin did you bother to read my White Slaves of Lesbo Island?!