Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

. . .

I don’t know about any of that Atla. In recent dreams — Visions really — I am taken by boat across a placid lake at dawn. The rowers all intone a harmonious mantra which I feel celebrates my metaphysical attainments. Birds twitter over the water and the light of a magnificent sun turns the cloud edges bright silver.

All around me the scent of jasmine flowers is carried by caressing breezes . . .

On the other shore I ascend into a gold-festooned chariot and we proceed up a gentle incline to a temple that — ¡lo and behold! — was built just for me. Humbled but ever-curious, I find myself led through a forest of enormous crystals — amethyst and topaz and emerald crystals which glow with internal light.

It saturates my very being and I begin to sing the glories of my own enlightenment …

And when I wake it’s all still there, though screened back and like a perpetual and abiding filament.

To all appearances I reckon I am the phantasmic embodiment of Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence . . .

Well, in the same Vision un manifest voices, angels I feel, ask me to make a statement. I say:

“I have lost all sense of personal identity and am now firmly persuaded that Christ is actively and immediately present wherever Darkness or Hell is actual and real …”

Whew!

[Atla]

. . .

I don’t know about any of that Atla. In recent dreams — Visions really — I am taken by boat across a placid lake at dawn. The rowers all intone a harmonious mantra which I feel celebrates my metaphysical attainments. Birds twitter over the water and the light of a magnificent sun turns the cloud edges bright silver.

All around me the scent of jasmine flowers is carried by caressing breezes . . .

On the other shore I ascend into a gold-festooned chariot and we proceed up a gentle incline to a temple that — ¡lo and behold! — was built just for me. Humbled but ever-curious, I find myself led through a forest of enormous crystals — amethyst and topaz and emerald crystals which glow with internal light.

It saturates my very being and I begin to sing the glories of my own enlightenment …

And when I wake it’s all still there, though screened back and like a perpetual and abiding filament.

To all appearances I reckon I am the phantasmic embodiment of Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence . . .

Well, in the same Vision un manifest voices, angels I feel, ask me to make a statement. I say:

“I have lost all sense of personal identity and am now firmly persuaded that Christ is actively and immediately present wherever Darkness or Hell is actual and real …”

Whew!

Lol okay

[Immanuel Can]

If god were just, he would sooner let in a humble atheist, such as my repentant self,

Quite a claim from somebody who clearly has no belief in anything that could justify a moral position. But at least you seem to know that justice, repentance and humility are moral values anyway…even if Naturalism can never justify them to you.

Yet another reason Naturalism is wrong. You know there are objective moral values.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Excellent, Atla! Now let's continue with the matters at hand ...

[Immanuel Can]

So if someone tells us that their God's Hell is twice as bad as Yahweh's and that their God requires human sacrifices and that not observing their God's wishes will result in being condemned to that Hell, should I observe that God "just in case", you know, as a precaution to avoid that God's greater punishment?

Here’s how it’s going to play out, Gary:

Not buying it. Maybe try selling something else.

There’s a line in Scripture: it exhorts, “Buy the truth, and sell it not.” That’s all I’m suggesting you do, Gary.

[Dubious]

If god were just, he would sooner let in a humble atheist, such as my repentant self,

Quite a claim from somebody who clearly has no belief in anything that could justify a moral position. But at least you seem to know that justice, repentance and humility are moral values anyway…even if Naturalism can never justify them to you.

It's easy not only to justify a moral position but make it mandatory since societies can't exist without one. Try establishing one without a moral code, whether others, with their own moral code, find it moral or not.

[Immanuel Can]

If god were just, he would sooner let in a humble atheist, such as my repentant self,

Quite a claim from somebody who clearly has no belief in anything that could justify a moral position. But at least you seem to know that justice, repentance and humility are moral values anyway…even if Naturalism can never justify them to you.

It's easy not only to justify a moral position but make it mandatory since societies can't exist without one. Try establishing one without a moral code, whether others, with their own moral code, find it moral or not.

The only way you can establish one, according to Naturalism, is to do so arbitrarily, without any rational justification for its terms, and then compel it by force. This is why secular moralizing always ends up being either ineffective of authoritarian. It has no means to justify itself rationally: and absent any legitimation method, it has to resort to force.

[Alexis Jacobi]

There’s a line in Scripture: it exhorts, “Buy the truth, and sell it not.” That’s all I’m suggesting you do, Gary.

Years ago I was glancing through the Scriptures and I swear I read a line that said “Seekest the truth, and when thou findest it, sellest it to thy brethren at a profit”.

It seemed so uniquely Hebrew! and it made a deep impression. In any case I have followed this advice and that is the entire design behind The 31-Week Email Course.

[Dubious]

Quite a claim from somebody who clearly has no belief in anything that could justify a moral position. But at least you seem to know that justice, repentance and humility are moral values anyway…even if Naturalism can never justify them to you.

It's easy not only to justify a moral position but make it mandatory since societies can't exist without one. Try establishing one without a moral code, whether others, with their own moral code, find it moral or not.

The only way you can establish one, according to Naturalism, is to do so arbitrarily, without any rational justification for its terms, and then compel it by force. This is why secular moralizing always ends up being either ineffective of authoritarian. It has no means to justify itself rationally: and absent any legitimation method, it has to resort to force.

The rational justification is the necessity for it as an organizing societal requirement. How it's determined is another story. Having said that, if moralizing by being authoritarian is ineffective, then the bible is the least effective by being the most authoritarian.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

If god were just, he would sooner let in a humble atheist, such as my repentant self,

Quite a claim from somebody who clearly has no belief in anything that could justify a moral position. But at least you seem to know that justice, repentance and humility are moral values anyway…even if Naturalism can never justify them to you.

It's easy not only to justify a moral position but make it mandatory since societies can't exist without one. Try establishing one without a moral code, whether others, with their own moral code, find it moral or not.

yore rong moral itty bitty is wot evva god sez it is so thair

[Dubious]

Ah, let me attempt to explain. We have an “imagining capability” which is one of our central faculties, Ist das nicht möglich?

Bestimmt! So viel ist offenbar. Das braucht keine Worte!

The imagining faculty can be contaminated, riven with imperfections, polluted by desire, need, will, and so much else.

Indubitably!

But isn’t a purified imagining capability possible?

By whom and by what standard can those imperfections be purified?

This is where my own view of “aristocracy” shows itself: the view that there are men with far better and higher imagining capabilities than mine. So, my view is that these men must be emulated.

Are those who emulate to decide what, in your view is aristocratic? That is not a minor quandary!

You believe (if I understand correctly) that our imagining capability invents what is imagined. My view is that we are receptors of stuff that is there. We are interpreters.

Saying we are receptors of stuff that is there is extremely vague. Stuff is everywhere; not all of it must be interpreted.

For myself, I don't need to be anchored to any accepted absolutes or meanings thereof.

Being mortal and thus conditioned by time into an infinitesimal, why waste time in perennially philosophizing over it? I'll take anything which delivers those highlighted periodic inflection points which my existence is capable of receiving, be it as metaphor or the contemplation of a cosmos replete with mysteries which art itself is often prone to emulate, consciously or not. Such experiences can only be realized in life since it was life alone which created it.

The emulation for me is the experience itself, its so-called qualia not to be had by submission to anyone else or their version of it.

...but you already knew that!

[Alexis Jacobi]

It’s weird, weird indeed: the entire cultural, social and economic trend in our societies is starkly away from a faith-based life. What is left as possible for the faithful are simulacra of faith-rehearsals. Our culture, and our own selves, are uniquely estranged from faith — and the movement toward living life absent those traditional faith expressions is the dominant zeitgeist.

However — check this out — in one sense it is IC and his elaborate rehearsals of faithfulness that show this pseudo-faith’s hollowness.

It’s bizarre: the faith that IC preaches for only has value and relevance for the dead: for one who has exited life.

The ultimate iconoclasm of the Christ spirit could only now have relevance to the degree to which it takes aim against all that is anti-life — such as the world of dead, which is really no world at all.

[Alexis Jacobi]

By whom and by what standard can those imperfections be purified?

I see where you are tending. But the question is still there. That purification of contaminations is possible. I only wanted to establish that.

[Immanuel Can]

It's easy not only to justify a moral position but make it mandatory since societies can't exist without one. Try establishing one without a moral code, whether others, with their own moral code, find it moral or not.

The only way you can establish one, according to Naturalism, is to do so arbitrarily, without any rational justification for its terms, and then compel it by force. This is why secular moralizing always ends up being either ineffective of authoritarian. It has no means to justify itself rationally: and absent any legitimation method, it has to resort to force.

The rational justification is the necessity for it as an organizing societal requirement.

Well, as you should be able to see, Naturalism can never deliver that. It has no means to do so. All it can do is lead one to the believe that all moral claims are arbitrary, and that nothing can be rationally justified by way of morality.

Lacking rational justification, even potentially, secular morality is at a loss. You have put the dilemma well: we do need morality, but by way of Naturalism, can’t possibly justify any. So forcing people to obey to an entirely arbitrary construction of morality becomes the only remaining option — a thing which is, in itself, immoral. For there’s nothing moral about the use of brute force.

…the bible is the least effective by being the most authoritarian.

That’s clearly not the case. If the Bible were authoritarian, it would have to have some means of forcing compliance. It does not. All it has is the power of moral conviction and of rational convincing to back it. If somebody doesn’t believe it, then they are not forced to. You, yourself, model that fact. You choose not to believe, and no forcible means contradict your choice…you can do that, unimpeded, even if it’s a wretched choice.

Not so with secular morality. The secular moralist has neither moral persuasion nor rational means of convincing, since everything in Naturalism itself invites nothing more than Nihilism and the use of coercive force.

[seeds]

There’s a line in Scripture: it exhorts, “Buy the truth, and sell it not.” That’s all I’m suggesting you do, Gary.

Years ago I was glancing through the Scriptures and I swear I read a line that said “Seekest the truth, and when thou findest it, sellest it to thy brethren at a profit”.

Nah, you must have been glancing through the Trumpian playbook written on a used roll of Charmin toilet paper, though how he got it back on the spool hub without breaking the sheets is a mystery.

Furthermore, it's highly unlikely that it mentioned anything about seeking and selling the "truth."

Sure, if there's a profit to be made, the Trumpian playbook (roll) may instruct you on how to sell the Brooklyn Bridge (or your grandma) to some MAGA idiots,...

...but "truth"? - not so much.

It seemed so uniquely Hebrew! and it made a deep impression. In any case I have followed this advice and that is the entire design behind The 31-Week Email Course.

Man, I miss the days when the "course" was only 10 weeks.

Does the price I paid back then include the additional 21 weeks?
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