Christianity

[Belinda]

If you imagine that’s what it’s all about, then yeah, you’re right: it wouldn’t achieve that purpose. But then, it isn’t about “making men good.” It’s about what fulfills the human telos and affords harmonious relationship with the Ultimate Good.


To whom? In another few years, the very existence of most people will have been forgotten…and according to the Naturalistic story, there’s nobody capable of preserving even the memory of the dead, let alone any of their essence. And, as Robert Browning so wisely pointed out, “living on in the memory of others” isn’t actually living at all. It’s feeding the worms with one’s flesh.

I agree that harmonious relationship with the ultimate good is the same as the good life.

I didn’t say that. And while it would depend on what you mean by “good life,” (if you meant it in an Aristotelian way, for example), I’m inclined to think maybe you’re mistaking “good” for something quite different than it really is. But I can’t tell from your wording.

Ultimate good is the same as reason and necessity.

No, that’s clearly not the case. “Necessity” is what one is forced to do; “reason” is a mental operation, and doesn’t imply any specific “doing” at all. And the ultimate good is God. So those things are quite distinct.

I agree "as Robert Browning so wisely pointed out, “living on in the memory of others” isn’t actually living at all. It’s feeding the worms with one’s flesh."

Death is good as it is the finality without which no life would have meaning.Meaning does not have to be meaning for another. Meaning correlates perfectly with reason.

Now “meaning” is added to that distinct triad? No, it doesn’t fit. “Reason” doesn’t impart “meaning,” and neither does “necessity,” obviously. As for “ultimate good,” you’re closer to right on that one, in that meaning pertains to the ultimate good. But the rest just looks to me like rhetorical flourishes.

You’ll have to explain how death “adds meaning” to life. That’s not intuitive or obvious in any way. Most people think death is to be avoided, and it’s not at all desirable…that is, mentally-healthy people think that.

As for “meaning” as being not “for another,” it’s irrelevant if one is dead. People won’t remember you, and you won’t remember anything, if death ends all. So that just means NOBODY’S got “meaning” for your life…neither you, nor anybody else.

Most people think dying is to be avoided but few would want to live forever, even with good health. Meaning is defined as explanatory narrative, sequence of specific changes through time. The end of the life is the end of the narrative. Maybe nobody is interested in the life story that is ended, least of all the deceased.However the bare fact the story ended allows the life story as a whole to become a necessary part of Nature or as you yourself prefer to say "God": whatever is a part of God is in harmony with God.

The word 'necessary' in the metaphysical context means that what happened necessarily happened and could not have been otherwise than it did happen. God (or Nature)cannot be otherwise than He is.

[Belinda]

Right now, maybe, you’re staking it on secularism. Or maybe it’s on no more than “I don’t want to think about it.” I can’t say. You can. But if it’s on secularism, bear in mind that secularism, of all the options, offers you no win. If it’s right, you’ll never know it is; if it’s wrong, you will.

Better to choose a different option, then. But choose wisely. Your eternal soul depends on your choice.

There is very certainly another option. Let us suppose that the soul is real, exists. And let us suppose that, somehow, here we all are in a world, this world. Let us suppose that our “immortal soul” not only exists, but cannot but exist. Simply because what “soul” is, is a fragment of the same being that is said to be “God”. True, we have a helluva time explaining existence, in perishable shells, in this weird world, suffering and joyous as we may be.

Once on realizes “I exist” and once one does sense Eternity, there something opens to a man. Certainly the value of life, but also life as an opportunity.

It may be not so much that Gary does not want to think about it, but rather that the Story that is his (our) cultural inheritance (the one IC tells) is simply too limited. We may well live again and again and again. But from whence this dark and dreary tale of eternal punishment in a hell-realm? What if this life now is our “just deserts” (“the punishment and the reward that one deserves”)? What if we visualized life here and now as our “spiritual world” and as the best that could be offered to us?

Your eternal soul…is eternal and nothing can change that. However, how we live now has determining power over how we will eventually live again.

This is of course not the Christian model, it is the Vedic model. It is far more ample and allows for more possibility than the limited Christian model.

In the Vedic model we are indeed enclosed within this reality. We are limited in it and by it. But there are both better and worse places we could be.

If we work on our now and our self, that is the key to progress.

The need for realization is similarly acute as in IC’s ultra-paranoid model, but really the entire mood is different. Life is bountiful even if tragic. But it is not destined to crush you, or mercilessly and cruelly torture and punish your soul in rehearsals of unending vengeance.

Your use of "model" in the context of this conversation is useful and informative as a basic attitude to philosophy. Have you read Rorty ?
Exploring God and meaning is about paying attention to the life around us — always unfolding, never final, and shaping how we act and relate.

[Alexis Jacobi]

That is how I see the religious paradigms that have been established and in and through with we live: models.

A few times I have said that in order to make our way through the collapsed structures that are each of the former Mediaeval models (be they Occidental or Oriental) we need a “master metaphysician” as a guide.

Someone with the breadth of understanding to see the fallen structures yet who could help to create a conceptual path to allow it to be possible to hold on to the “meaning & value” which the container carries.

[Alexis Jacobi]

What is most fascinating to me is to observe and think about how this conflict and debate between pro-Christians and anti-Christians is playing out in the manosphere. That is, the world of debate and opinion-sharing and battling that is so topical to our present.

In this conversation, Adam Green, a very committed anti-Christian talks about the elements that operate behind both ‘belief’ and ‘belief-systems’, but specifically with a very obvious and stated anti-Judaic mission.

The deconstruction of Christianity is the deconstruction of Judaism. This much is plain as day. What is fascinating is that this conversation (I mean entire orders of conversation occurring everywhere) all takes fuel from the Israel meltdown. The beginning of the end of the Israel Project. It is all extremely topical.

And who should pop-up here but Richard Spencer who I had not heard of for years now. But he has some interesting perspectives.

[Fairy]

Relax and know you are God who speaks the only language heard as and through the silent heart of unconditional love.

In order for love to be real, it must be free. How wonderful that God chose to give unconditional life, knowing that would be used as free will to sin. That pure love is something that can be hard to understand, as sinners are not able to love so deeply.
Yet, God’s infinite wisdom, loved unconditionally, continues to love unconditionally, and will love unconditionally forever.

Be the love you deserve because you give and receive love only to yourself. The love you see in others comes from you. In fact love has only one source, it comes directly from itself, sourced only in you.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

This is nicely evolving. Not only is the God of the Book, any version (of God or Book), not Love, and neither is any best case God beyond it, but all religious belief is of the strongest evidence for evolution, not that it needs any more since the ancient Greeks, in meaningless, unintentional, unintended, God-free nature.

Oooh, and I wonder if the mind wiping horrors of existence are actually worse than they would be naturally, in IC's cosmos, because demons? Which lets us off the hook a bit. That would be great!

[Alexis Jacobi]

One interesting thing: IC has never made reference to Satan, a crucial figure in the Christian picture. It has always seemed an unusual omission.

[Gary Childress]

One interesting thing: IC has never made reference to Satan, a crucial figure in the Christian picture. It has always seemed an unusual omission.

That's because good people only have God in their thoughts, which obviously makes IC a good person. At least, I think that's how good people must think.

[Belinda]

That is how I see the religious paradigms that have been established and in and through with we live: models.

A few times I have said that in order to make our way through the collapsed structures that are each of the former Mediaeval models (be they Occidental or Oriental) we need a “master metaphysician” as a guide.

Someone with the breadth of understanding to see the fallen structures yet who could help to create a conceptual path to allow it to be possible to hold on to the “meaning & value” which the container carries.

Not to stop at the collapsed medieval models but also to continue through collapsed 19th and 20th century models , stopping only when you arrive at a pragmatically fertile model , and then discarding that in its turn.
God is not in any model, Alexis, God is the seeking .

[Martin Peter Clarke]

One interesting thing: IC has never made reference to Satan, a crucial figure in the Christian picture. It has always seemed an unusual omission.

That's because good people only have God in their thoughts, which obviously makes IC a good person. At least, I think that's how good people must think.

And if you think about him, that's an invitation! [Don't worry, everything's fine, he'll leave you alone, AS LONG AS YOU NEVER THINK ABOUT SATAN!!!!]. I think they think that mentioning him reduces their credibility... One thing that unites every Muslim, Christian and believing Jew in the Middle East. There is a devil. I think he gets a bad press.

I think they're ashamed of him!

[Even as a Christian, I managed to deconstruct the entire angelic realm to the psychological. And/or to the epiphanic. You see, the problem of the scandal of the particular, is even worse than it is for Jesus. If God the bloke is the only incarnation in all of the eternal infinity of inhabited worlds, then Lucifer is a demiurge. Do you get that? OR if God incarnates on every inhabited world, of infinite from eternity, to be fair, they all, each, must have their own local Satan. No? That's a bit dodgy isn't it?]

[Alexis Jacobi]

God is not in any model, Alexis, God is the seeking.

No, I speak of a 'model' as the way a man organizes his perception of this entity we call "god". The system which is organized toward this 'entity' is indeed a model.

[Dubious]

God is not in any model, Alexis, God is the seeking.

No, I speak of a 'model' as the way a man organizes his perception of this entity we call "god". The system which is organized toward this 'entity' is indeed a model.

But must it stand still, unmovable once organized. By invoking a model of god, have we managed to make one so efficient it will never again require an upgrade or re-edit on occasion? Since god is our creation, we have modelled an image, nothing more.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

God is not in any model, Alexis, God is the seeking.

No, I speak of a 'model' as the way a man organizes his perception of this entity we call "god". The system which is organized toward this 'entity' is indeed a model.

But must it stand still, unmovable once organized. By invoking a model of god, have we managed to make one so efficient it will never again require an upgrade or re-edit on occasion? Since god is our creation, we have modelled an image, nothing more.

This year God will be mainly, in a return to tradition, wearing a storm of black velvet, matching his glistening hair and beard curls, sweeping at 30 degrees up from His feet, riven with threads of lightning. He'll be girt about the paps with an eagle winged golden girdle. From the waist down a crimson, ankle length, unpleated skirt. The sun will be eclipsed behind his head, prominences of fire licking out, but, mysteriously the sky will be the palest blue, to match his eyes, sparkling in his oiled terracotta countenance.

[Gary Childress]

God is not in any model, Alexis, God is the seeking.

No, I speak of a 'model' as the way a man organizes his perception of this entity we call "god". The system which is organized toward this 'entity' is indeed a model.

But must it stand still, unmovable once organized. By invoking a model of god, have we managed to make one so efficient it will never again require an upgrade or re-edit on occasion? Since god is our creation, we have modelled an image, nothing more.

I would think that God doesn't want to be defined or understood, nor would God "choose" any human(s) to be in any special relation to him/her/it. At least that's how I imagine the designer of all that is would be. Of course, who knows, maybe God wants human sacrifices, or else he'll send a flood to drown us all. That's always a theoretical possibility, I guess.

[Dubious]

No, I speak of a 'model' as the way a man organizes his perception of this entity we call "god". The system which is organized toward this 'entity' is indeed a model.

But must it stand still, unmovable once organized. By invoking a model of god, have we managed to make one so efficient it will never again require an upgrade or re-edit on occasion? Since god is our creation, we have modelled an image, nothing more.

I would think that God doesn't want to be defined or understood, nor would God "choose" anyone to be in any special relation to him/her/it.

I agree for no other reason that it's impossible to define nothing as more than nothing. But such a gap is precisely what imagination strives to overcome. Ergo, the collective feat of imagination in the production of gods.

When one thinks of all the fictions created, why would one which gives god a story be any different.