Christianity

[Martin Peter Clarke]

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?!

But of course! I haven't laughed so much in ages.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

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.

Fuck that. Fuck You. No deal. Fuck Your 'love'. Go fuck Yourself with it. I'll try and be a decent human being, in my privilege, despite you, sorry, You. Fucker. Is what I feel like saying. But obviously I won't. You might smite me with frogs or worms. On a rotisserie. And I used to worry that I had a mental landscape like a Bosch and it was somehow due to weakness of mind from wanking. Cuh. Fuh.

It is pathetically easy to be more moral, more righteous than God.

[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.

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

Right Belinda. No, it is not the sound of one hand clapping. Like China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, it has chiaroscuro. All truly great stories do. For Pan narrans.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Calm, Martin! Calm down. My effort is only to explain what the true essence of the statement “God loves you” actually means. I.e. what this love is.

Try to get a grip on yourself. Breathe.

(I do refer to the Christian concept. The Hebrew notion seems to be quite different.)

[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.

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

...on most of it based on a very fundamental historical fact. The bible is a purely Jewish text, written by them, applicable to them only and not to any outsiders against whom it wasn't in the least immoral to commit and order genocide. There is a huge dichotomy of accepted standards of morality within a group as tribalistic as the Jews of the bible were epitomised as being...which also includes all the supposed and noble sayings of Jesus. There were no non-Jews in his group or allowed for inclusion. Such would have been anathema against Judaism itself.

It needs to be stated repeatedly, it was Paul who in and by his own mission deformed - some would say transformed - the purely tribalistic into an ecumenical movement within the Roman world. This is not what "Jesus" own mission in any way intended to be.

Put another way, Jesus was no Spinoza, another Jew whose philosophy brilliantly transcended Jewish tradition including all of its Christian derivatives.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Calm, Martin! Calm down. My effort is only to explain what the true essence of the statement “God loves you” actually means. I.e. what this love is.

Try to get a grip on yourself. Breathe.

(I do refer to the Christian concept. The Hebrew notion seems to be quite different.)

Don't worry. I'm calm. My cold fury wasn't directed at you, of course Alexis. (Vixen on the railway, just then, love it). You remind me of me Dad. 'Get a bloody grip, man!'. I'll consider your (suspiciously grandiose) effort on the morrow...

...And good morning. So what does 'the true essence of the statement “God loves you” actually mean'? What is its true essence for a start. What is this Christian concept of the love of God? To you?

To me it's a perversion, an inversion, of the truth of Love, of what Love would be, of what we all consiliently mean by Love; we all know what it is and would be, from its inception. John 3:17.

[Dubious]

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.

I think Jesus would have been super-surprised that he was elected to die as a sacrificial lamb for the forgiveness of sins. Is that for ALL sins or just the Jewish ones! This incredibly stupid, loathsome, disgusting idea was an invention to give his death, which would have been meaningless, a message to restore that life into one of significance. Again, it needs reiteration, without the consequent necessary improvisations rendering the whole Jesus episode into a central historical event, he would long have dissolved into historical anonymity with barely a sequel...if that!

But you're right. Love, simple decency, even logic would not have required such a denouement or demanded such retribution since it accomplished nothing. When have we ever stopped sinning? As a common mythic theme, in one form or another, to make up for that in some cultures, necessitates multiple daily sacrifices, not unlike the Aztecs tearing the living heart out of captured prisoners to give the sun the energy it needs to rise each day.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

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.

I think Jesus would have been super-surprised that he was elected to die as a sacrificial lamb for the forgiveness of sins. Is that for ALL sins or just the Jewish ones! This incredibly stupid, loathsome, disgusting idea was an invention to give his death, which would have been meaningless, a message to restore that life into one of significance. Again, it needs reiteration, without the consequent necessary improvisations rendering the whole Jesus episode into a central historical event, he would long have dissolved into historical anonymity with barely a sequel...if that!

But you're right. Love, simple decency, even logic would not have required such a denouement or demanded such retribution since it accomplished nothing. When have we ever stopped sinning? As a common mythic theme, in one form or another, to make up for that in some cultures, necessitates multiple daily sacrifices, not unlike the Aztecs tearing the living heart out of captured prisoners to give the sun the energy it needs to rise each day.

It had meaning to him because of his culture. Because of second temple messianism. Because of Jewish history. Because of mystic Mary his mother. It had meaning, has meaning for vast numbers of people to this day. We can only come to the realisation that it is an incredibly stupid, loathsome, disgusting idea after twenty centuries of privilege, free thinking, exponentially kicking off in the late C20th if that. I'm not aware of this critique anywhere else before now. It must be in the literature of atheism, surely from the C19th. but I'm not aware of it. It's not in Nietzsche.

And, sorry mate, it's non sequitur to me that it was meant to stop us sinning and it hasn't. To Christians it has stopped them sinning, so much, they consider themselves repentant, saved from meaningless depravity; depravity born of meaninglessness or wrong religion. They sublimate their desires in not exercising them, in ecstatic thrall to Jesus' perfect sacrifice for sin. So they believe. Yet they are no less criminal and immoral than anyone else in their milieux. And of course they would then argue that they have leavened their societies, that they won't stand out in their morality because they have raised the standard by dominating societies, by Christianizing, redefining Roman law. We can't win : ) Well we can, because of multiculturalism. Are British Christians less likely to 'sin' by objective standards than British Hindus or British Muslims? What are their theft and murder rates? Their divorce rates? Their child abuse rates? Their miraculous healing rates for that matter. All weighted for socio-economic factors. You'd think some fascist 'intellectual' would have shown this.

We have to give good will to Jesus and his religion, only emphasize the 'positive'. To see how flawed, how human, how Loveless even, and especially, above and below all, that is.

I'm astounded that I'm the first person in history to say this. And therefore I must be risibly wrong.

You saw it here first. Although I argued it in Ship Of Fools for the past couple or three years. They refused to see it.

[Dubious]

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.

I think Jesus would have been super-surprised that he was elected to die as a sacrificial lamb for the forgiveness of sins. Is that for ALL sins or just the Jewish ones! This incredibly stupid, loathsome, disgusting idea was an invention to give his death, which would have been meaningless, a message to restore that life into one of significance. Again, it needs reiteration, without the consequent necessary improvisations rendering the whole Jesus episode into a central historical event, he would long have dissolved into historical anonymity with barely a sequel...if that!

But you're right. Love, simple decency, even logic would not have required such a denouement or demanded such retribution since it accomplished nothing. When have we ever stopped sinning? As a common mythic theme, in one form or another, to make up for that in some cultures, necessitates multiple daily sacrifices, not unlike the Aztecs tearing the living heart out of captured prisoners to give the sun the energy it needs to rise each day.

It had meaning to him because of his culture. Because of second temple messianism. Because of Jewish history. Because of mystic Mary his mother. It had meaning, has meaning for vast numbers of people to this day. We can only come to the realisation that it is an incredibly stupid, loathsome, disgusting idea after twenty centuries of privilege, free thinking, exponentially kicking off in the late C20th if that. I'm not aware of this critique anywhere else before now. It must be in the literature of atheism, surely from the C19th. but I'm not aware of it. It's not in Nietzsche.

And, sorry mate, it's non sequitur to me that it was meant to stop us sinning and it hasn't. To Christians it has stopped them sinning, so much, they consider themselves repentant, saved from meaningless depravity; depravity born of meaninglessness or wrong religion. They sublimate their desires in not exercising them, in ecstatic thrall to Jesus' perfect sacrifice for sin. So they believe. Yet they are no less criminal and immoral than anyone else in their milieux. And of course they would then argue that they have leavened their societies, that they won't stand out in their morality because they have raised the standard by dominating societies, by Christianizing, redefining Roman law. We can't win : ) Well we can, because of multiculturalism. Are British Christians less likely to 'sin' by objective standards than British Hindus or British Muslims? What are their theft and murder rates? Their divorce rates? Their child abuse rates? Their miraculous healing rates for that matter. All weighted for socio-economic factors. You'd think some fascist 'intellectual' would have shown this.

We have to give good will to Jesus and his religion, only emphasize the 'positive'. To see how flawed, how human, how Loveless even, and especially, above and below all, that is.

I'm astounded that I'm the first person in history to say this. And therefore I must be risibly wrong.

You saw it here first. Although I argued it in Ship Of Fools for the past couple or three years. They refused to see it.

That's exactly the point when I said, "When have we ever stopped sinning?" So what did this gruesome atonement of our sins accomplish? During Christian times sinning was as rampant and as violent as during any time prior.

[Belinda]

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?

...on most of it based on a very fundamental historical fact. The bible is a purely Jewish text, written by them, applicable to them only and not to any outsiders against whom it wasn't in the least immoral to commit and order genocide. There is a huge dichotomy of accepted standards of morality within a group as tribalistic as the Jews of the bible were epitomised as being...which also includes all the supposed and noble sayings of Jesus. There were no non-Jews in his group or allowed for inclusion. Such would have been anathema against Judaism itself.

It needs to be stated repeatedly, it was Paul who in and by his own mission deformed - some would say transformed - the purely tribalistic into an ecumenical movement within the Roman world. This is not what "Jesus" own mission in any way intended to be.

Put another way, Jesus was no Spinoza, another Jew whose philosophy brilliantly transcended Jewish tradition including all of its Christian derivatives.

But there were many non-Jewish heroes and heroines in The Bible. The entire Book of Ruth is about a non-Jewish heroine. The famous Good Samaritan was not a Jew, The Queen of Sheba was not a Jew. Lydia who sheltered Paul was not a Jew. There was a Roman soldier who was decent to Jesus.

I love Spinoza not because he was a Jew or an Iberian, but because his grand theory is accessible to all thinkers of all faiths and none.

If it was indeed Jesus who told the story of The Good Samaritan then Jesus himself was not "tribalistic".

[Martin Peter Clarke]

I think Jesus would have been super-surprised that he was elected to die as a sacrificial lamb for the forgiveness of sins. Is that for ALL sins or just the Jewish ones! This incredibly stupid, loathsome, disgusting idea was an invention to give his death, which would have been meaningless, a message to restore that life into one of significance. Again, it needs reiteration, without the consequent necessary improvisations rendering the whole Jesus episode into a central historical event, he would long have dissolved into historical anonymity with barely a sequel...if that!

But you're right. Love, simple decency, even logic would not have required such a denouement or demanded such retribution since it accomplished nothing. When have we ever stopped sinning? As a common mythic theme, in one form or another, to make up for that in some cultures, necessitates multiple daily sacrifices, not unlike the Aztecs tearing the living heart out of captured prisoners to give the sun the energy it needs to rise each day.

It had meaning to him because of his culture. Because of second temple messianism. Because of Jewish history. Because of mystic Mary his mother. It had meaning, has meaning for vast numbers of people to this day. We can only come to the realisation that it is an incredibly stupid, loathsome, disgusting idea after twenty centuries of privilege, free thinking, exponentially kicking off in the late C20th if that. I'm not aware of this critique anywhere else before now. It must be in the literature of atheism, surely from the C19th. but I'm not aware of it. It's not in Nietzsche.

And, sorry mate, it's non sequitur to me that it was meant to stop us sinning and it hasn't. To Christians it has stopped them sinning, so much, they consider themselves repentant, saved from meaningless depravity; depravity born of meaninglessness or wrong religion. They sublimate their desires in not exercising them, in ecstatic thrall to Jesus' perfect sacrifice for sin. So they believe. Yet they are no less criminal and immoral than anyone else in their milieux. And of course they would then argue that they have leavened their societies, that they won't stand out in their morality because they have raised the standard by dominating societies, by Christianizing, redefining Roman law. We can't win : ) Well we can, because of multiculturalism. Are British Christians less likely to 'sin' by objective standards than British Hindus or British Muslims? What are their theft and murder rates? Their divorce rates? Their child abuse rates? Their miraculous healing rates for that matter. All weighted for socio-economic factors. You'd think some fascist 'intellectual' would have shown this.

We have to give good will to Jesus and his religion, only emphasize the 'positive'. To see how flawed, how human, how Loveless even, and especially, above and below all, that is.

I'm astounded that I'm the first person in history to say this. And therefore I must be risibly wrong.

You saw it here first. Although I argued it in Ship Of Fools for the past couple or three years. They refused to see it.

That's exactly the point when I said, "When have we ever stopped sinning?" So what did this gruesome atonement of our sins accomplish? During Christian times sinning was as rampant and as violent as during any time prior.

Indeed. But Christians would deny by them. Despite the obscene, vast, imperialistic horrors they have perpetrated as Christendom since the 300s. They knock the blips of Temugen; Genghis Khan, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot in to a cocked hat. If their morality doesn't break the surface of society, it's because they have elevated society!

[Belinda]

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.

I think Jesus would have been super-surprised that he was elected to die as a sacrificial lamb for the forgiveness of sins. Is that for ALL sins or just the Jewish ones! This incredibly stupid, loathsome, disgusting idea was an invention to give his death, which would have been meaningless, a message to restore that life into one of significance. Again, it needs reiteration, without the consequent necessary improvisations rendering the whole Jesus episode into a central historical event, he would long have dissolved into historical anonymity with barely a sequel...if that!

But you're right. Love, simple decency, even logic would not have required such a denouement or demanded such retribution since it accomplished nothing. When have we ever stopped sinning? As a common mythic theme, in one form or another, to make up for that in some cultures, necessitates multiple daily sacrifices, not unlike the Aztecs tearing the living heart out of captured prisoners to give the sun the energy it needs to rise each day.

The difference between atonement and propitiation is that propitiation pertains to our relationship with natural forces beyond our control, while atonement pertains to our relationship to a merciful and forgiving deity.

I do understand the repugnance felt by the likeness to superstitious human sacrifice. The sacrifice of Christ symbolises the direction we must take in order to love the good God; the direction we must take is summed up in the words "Take up your cross" . Look around you at good reportage or personal observation of the world today and we see those individuals who have taken up their crosses .

[Martin Peter Clarke]

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.

I think Jesus would have been super-surprised that he was elected to die as a sacrificial lamb for the forgiveness of sins. Is that for ALL sins or just the Jewish ones! This incredibly stupid, loathsome, disgusting idea was an invention to give his death, which would have been meaningless, a message to restore that life into one of significance. Again, it needs reiteration, without the consequent necessary improvisations rendering the whole Jesus episode into a central historical event, he would long have dissolved into historical anonymity with barely a sequel...if that!

But you're right. Love, simple decency, even logic would not have required such a denouement or demanded such retribution since it accomplished nothing. When have we ever stopped sinning? As a common mythic theme, in one form or another, to make up for that in some cultures, necessitates multiple daily sacrifices, not unlike the Aztecs tearing the living heart out of captured prisoners to give the sun the energy it needs to rise each day.

The difference between atonement and propitiation is that propitiation pertains to our relationship with natural forces beyond our control, while atonement pertains to our relationship to a merciful and forgiving deity.

the action of propitiating or appeasing a god, spirit, or person:
"he lifted his hands in propitiation"
atonement, especially that of Jesus Christ.

Not something, anything, Love needs to do.

If God were real, They would deliver us from such evil. Evil beliefs.

[Belinda]

I think Jesus would have been super-surprised that he was elected to die as a sacrificial lamb for the forgiveness of sins. Is that for ALL sins or just the Jewish ones! This incredibly stupid, loathsome, disgusting idea was an invention to give his death, which would have been meaningless, a message to restore that life into one of significance. Again, it needs reiteration, without the consequent necessary improvisations rendering the whole Jesus episode into a central historical event, he would long have dissolved into historical anonymity with barely a sequel...if that!

But you're right. Love, simple decency, even logic would not have required such a denouement or demanded such retribution since it accomplished nothing. When have we ever stopped sinning? As a common mythic theme, in one form or another, to make up for that in some cultures, necessitates multiple daily sacrifices, not unlike the Aztecs tearing the living heart out of captured prisoners to give the sun the energy it needs to rise each day.

The difference between atonement and propitiation is that propitiation pertains to our relationship with natural forces beyond our control, while atonement pertains to our relationship to a merciful and forgiving deity.

the action of propitiating or appeasing a god, spirit, or person:
"he lifted his hands in propitiation"
atonement, especially that of Jesus Christ.

Not something, anything, Love needs to do.

Who "lifted his hands in propitiation"? i never heard of such a person. Propitiation always involved some sort of sacrifice, otherwise the gods would not take you seriously.
I am afraid that despite my very best effort I have not been able to explain to you the difference between propitiation and atonement. So I will leave it there.

[Gary Childress]

The difference between atonement and propitiation is that propitiation pertains to our relationship with natural forces beyond our control, while atonement pertains to our relationship to a merciful and forgiving deity.

the action of propitiating or appeasing a god, spirit, or person:
"he lifted his hands in propitiation"
atonement, especially that of Jesus Christ.

Not something, anything, Love needs to do.

Who "lifted his hands in propitiation"? i never heard of such a person. Propitiation always involved some sort of sacrifice, otherwise the gods would not take you seriously.
I am afraid that despite my very best effort I have not been able to explain to you the difference between propitiation and atonement. So I will leave it there.

I guess there are two kinds of miserable people in the world, those who suffer justifiably and those who don't suffer justifiably. Which category do the sympathetic and empathetic fall into when they suffer over the fact that others are suffering?