Christianity

[Belinda]

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?

If it weren't for the fact that ordinary human sympathy is the healthy norm there would be no human species to justify anything

[Fairy]

Atheist’s think.

Christians just believe.

[Belinda]

Atheist’s think.

Christians just believe.

It's an interesting claim but it needs to be quantified. Even before it can be quantified your claim needs definitions of 'Christians' , 'Atheists', and 'believe'.

[Gary Childress]

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?

If it weren't for the fact that ordinary human sympathy is the healthy norm there would be no human species to justify anything

Religions, as practiced, often seem to divide between justified suffering and unjustified suffering, and often those two divides are pretty consistently separated along the lines of "unbelievers" and "believers" respectively. Unless one is a true "Christian", then all suffering is ultimately justified.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

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.

Ask Copilot to help you.

[Alexis Jacobi]

… 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.

William Wordsworth’s brother John died at sea and William expressed the following:

Why have we sympathies that make the best of us so afraid of inflicting pain and sorrow, which yet we see dealt about so lavishly by the supreme governor? …Would it not be blasphemy to say that, upon the supposition of the thinking principle being destroyed by death, however inferior we may be to the great Cause and Ruler of things, we have more of love in our nature than He has? The thought is monstrous; and yet how to get rid of it, except on the supposition of another and a better world, I do not see.

[Gary Childress]

… 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.

William Wordsworth’s brother John died at sea and William expressed the following:

Why have we sympathies that make the best of us so afraid of inflicting pain and sorrow, which yet we see dealt about so lavishly by the supreme governor? …Would it not be blasphemy to say that, upon the supposition of the thinking principle being destroyed by death, however inferior we may be to the great Cause and Ruler of things, we have more of love in our nature than He has? The thought is monstrous; and yet how to get rid of it, except on the supposition of another and a better world, I do not see.

It'll be all sunshine and roses after I die...for everyone else.

[Gary Childress]

Or not...

[Alexis Jacobi]

One interesting idea that comes out of the Vaishnava religion and its metaphysics can shed light on the rudimentary Christian notion of a Fall. Any religion, all religions, must have a Story about origin: how we got here and why we got here.

In Vaishnavism they base their cosmology — both physical and material and psychic-psychological — on the notion of our being “caught in the material entanglement”. It is a world among many possible worlds. They presuppose an infinite quantity of worlds (lokas)

The concept of a loka or lokas develops in the Vedic literature. Influenced by the special connotations that a word for space might have for a nomadic people, loka in the Veda did not simply mean place or world, but had a positive valuation: it was a place or position of religious or psychological interest with a special value of function of its own.

Hence, inherent in the 'loka' concept in the earliest literature was a double aspect; that is, coexistent with spatiality was a religious or soteriological meaning, which could exist independent of a spatial notion, an 'immaterial' significance.

The most common cosmological conception of lokas in the Veda was that of the trailokya or triple world: three worlds consisting of earth, atmosphere or sky, and heaven, making up the universe."

So, they say, we are in a specific loka or world, and we are here for reasons. The moral and ethical substructure is part-and-parcel of the cosmological definitions. It is not random but, ultimately, is controlled (administered) by intelligence. According to this view, (they say) we should be very thankful that we have our birth and our existence in this particular “world” because, for one, it is certainly not one of lowest Lokas, but is an intermediate one.

But here is the ethical crux: we are said to live in an “exterior manifestation of the Supreme Being”. Yet it is implied 1) that there are “interior manifestations” of the Supreme Being: zones or areas of greater affiliation. But 2) there are areas and zones of far more “exterior” manifestation. I.e. more mechanics, more brutal, more mindless perhaps, than our own world is.

Religion, therefore, has a specific function: it is activity, or avoidance of action, that brings us into greater closeness and relationship to “God’s interior being (“energy”).

This illustrates in a finer manner the Christian metaphysical notion of Heaven and Hell — and as well an intermediate space. The notion of hell is always an amplification of what is horrible, random, merciless and terrifying (demoralizing) in our own experience here. (Heaven is naturally an amplification of what we like so much about Life when it behaves and is beneficent.)

The notion of The Avatar who descends from a higher plane to provide information to those stuck in “the material entanglement” can best be illustrated if a complexity of worlds is understood to be a cosmological reality.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Whatever story makes you a better person in practice is good.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

… 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.

William Wordsworth’s brother John died at sea and William expressed the following:

Why have we sympathies that make the best of us so afraid of inflicting pain and sorrow, which yet we see dealt about so lavishly by the supreme governor? …Would it not be blasphemy to say that, upon the supposition of the thinking principle being destroyed by death, however inferior we may be to the great Cause and Ruler of things, we have more of love in our nature than He has? The thought is monstrous; and yet how to get rid of it, except on the supposition of another and a better world, I do not see.

Superb! I'm channelling Wordsworth! Why has no one repeated this for two centuries? Did anyone say so before? No Christian that's for sure. And no new atheist. Pray God I'm not even wrong.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Atheist’s think.

Christians just believe.

It's an interesting claim but it needs to be quantified. Even before it can be quantified your claim needs definitions of 'Christians' , 'Atheists', and 'believe'.

Common sense will do. As in all the specious, complex, unreal objections to knowledge, morality and induction.

Peter Keeble spotlights and critiques a common philosophical technique.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/169/Th ... _Exception

You cannot reason your way to unwarranted, unjustified, untrue belief.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

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?

If it weren't for the fact that ordinary human sympathy is the healthy norm there would be no human species to justify anything

Yeah, evolution knows what it's doing.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Whatever story makes you a better person in practice is good.

The actual point goes a bit farther though: the modern position that is so involved in the Verification Principle, determines (like you have determined and like most others), that all such metaphysical stories are invented tales which, naturally, have all sorts of functions (ethical admonition, social and political control, or simply a Story to believe in) but no realness, no veracity.

You seem to be — to put it in reduced terms — a man who recently became post-Christian (there is surely an entire story there; what happened, why, etc.) and whose “belief” has left him bereft of definition in a wider metaphysical sense. You share this with millions of others because this is exactly where we are. Neither in ‘the world of physics’ but neither out of the (at least conceptual) world of metaphysical interpretation.

Bereft, shipwrecked, drowning at sea, crying out to … to Nothing . No answer comes. And there, there the Final Wave rolls in …

Why WHY?! not sign up for The Course?! All answers are provided! (And we are working on a very attractive Dental Plan that will roll out in September. Check it out!)

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Whatever story makes you a better person in practice is good.

The actual point goes a bit farther though: the modern position that is so involved in the Verification Principle, determines (like you have determined and like most others), that all such metaphysical stories are invented tales which, naturally, have all sorts of functions (ethical admonition, social and political control, or simply a Story to believe in) but no realness, no veracity.

You seem to be — to put it in reduced terms — a man who recently became post-Christian (there is surely an entire story there; what happened, why, etc.) and whose “belief” has left him bereft of definition in a wider metaphysical sense. You share this with millions of others because this is exactly where we are. Neither in ‘the world of physics’ but neither out of the (at least conceptual) world of metaphysical interpretation.

Bereft, shipwrecked, drowning at sea, crying out to … to Nothing . No answer comes. And there, there the Final Wave rolls in …

Why WHY?! not sign up for The Course?! All answers are provided! (And we are working on a very attractive Dental Plan that will roll out in September. Check it out!)

My wider metaphysical sense detects the Rogerian in enlightened self interest. If that's abstract enough. Whatever I want I must give. First. Beyond it is the sense of beauty. And evil. Social injustice. Physics does metaphysics. In minds. I value the structure. Suspiciously.

And yes, there's a longgggggg boring story of 71 years. Abstracting certainly helps.