Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

Why should an agnostic believe something like that?

Like what?

In my own life, I'd say there is such a thing as karma.

Then you're a Hindu. That is, assuming you understand what "karma" means, which most people in the West apparently do not.

They believe genocide is wrong.

Who does?

Why do they believe that?

Why does who believe what?

Why should an agnostic believe he can do anything and everything he wants to someone else. You said there was no reason they should believe the opposite.

The logic of their own beliefs implies there's no objective moral standard, or at least no certainty about reason to believe in any. Therefore, an Atheist or an agnostic is not prevented from doing anything. That's easy to see.

China believes genocide is wrong.

You don't know China. Go ask the Uighurs about that. https://ieres.elliott.gwu.edu/project/c ... t-uyghurs/

I'm not a practicing Hindu any more than I'm a practicing Christian. So why do you say I'm a "Hindu".

Oh. So you're not a Hindu, and don't know what "karma" actually relates to? But you suppose you believe in it anyway?

[Gary Childress]

Like what?

Then you're a Hindu. That is, assuming you understand what "karma" means, which most people in the West apparently do not.

Who does?

Why does who believe what?

Why should an agnostic believe he can do anything and everything he wants to someone else. You said there was no reason they should believe the opposite.

The logic of their own beliefs implies there's no objective moral standard, or at least no certainty about reason to believe in any. Therefore, an Atheist or an agnostic is not prevented from doing anything. That's easy to see.

The logic of agnosticism does NOT imply there is no objective moral standard. It implies that I don't know if there's an objective moral standard. That doesn't tell me there's no objective standard. You're confusing agnosticism with atheism. Please stop doing that.

China believes genocide is wrong.

You don't know China. Go ask the Uighurs about that. https://ieres.elliott.gwu.edu/project/c ... t-uyghurs/

I'm not a practicing Hindu any more than I'm a practicing Christian. So why do you say I'm a "Hindu".

Oh. So you're not a Hindu, and don't know what "karma" actually relates to? But you suppose you believe in it anyway?

Really? And what does karma "actually relate to"?

[Immanuel Can]

The logic of agnosticism does NOT imply there is no objective moral standard.

No, but it implies that if there is one, the agnostic doesn't know what it is. So he still has no certainty about morality even existing. He might hope it does, but by his own confession, he doesn't know of a basis for any such thing.

China believes genocide is wrong.

You don't know China. Go ask the Uighurs about that. https://ieres.elliott.gwu.edu/project/c ... t-uyghurs/

Oh. So you're not a Hindu, and don't know what "karma" actually relates to? But you suppose you believe in it anyway?

Really? And what does karma "actually relate to"?

Hinduism. It requires a belief in reincarnation. Karma isn't just "what goes around comes around." It's more like, "what you do in this life, your dharma determines your next life, when the wheel of samsara has revolved."

Did you check the link on China?

[Age]

The logic of agnosticism does NOT imply there is no objective moral standard.

No, but it implies that if there is one, the agnostic doesn't know what it is.

The Fact that you can not just write down some so-called 'objective moral standard, means and proves that you "immanuel can" do not know if one exists, or not, and that if there is, that you then do not what 'it' is, also.

So, what good does calling "yourself" a so-called "christian" do 'you', here, exactly?

Not that you will answer and clarify, because of 'the repercussions' to 'you', and to 'those beliefs' of 'yours'.

So he still has no certainty about morality even existing. He might hope it does, but by his own confession, he doesn't know of a basis for any such thing.

You don't know China. Go ask the Uighurs about that. https://ieres.elliott.gwu.edu/project/c ... t-uyghurs/

Really? And what does karma "actually relate to"?

Hinduism. It requires a belief in reincarnation. Karma isn't just "what goes around comes around." It's more like, "what you do in this life, your dharma determines your next life, when the wheel of samsara has revolved."

Here, is 'another prime example', of 'these people' completely and utterly misinterpreting, misunderstanding, intercommunicating, missing the mark, and just plain old missing out.

Did you check the link on China?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Really? And what does karma "actually relate to"?

IC did not answer quite well enough. If you believe in ‘karma’ you must have a definition of it. Karma is a universal law that implies a divine agency that metes out reward or punishment for all actions performed by all beings that exist in this and all worlds. It is deeply bound up with ideas about cause and effect: what we do will rebound on us, in one way or another, inevitably.

The idea is that the world we are now in, the blessings and the sufferings we experience, are our rewards and punishments for past actions, conscious or unconscious. We are exactly where we deserve to be.

The law of karma implies that if we change our activities — stop doing bad and do good — that eventually our choices will rebound on us. Either in this life or in a succession of lives.

The science of religious philosophy, therefore, is one where we learn how these divinely ordained laws work. And the object, simply put, is to act in ways that ensure better future outcomes. The sum of our ‘karma’ is inalterable, but we can choose to act differently now to reap benefits in the future.

The disciple of yoga is in fact a religious science that involves learning to ‘disincarnate’ from a given incarnation reality. Karma Yoga is the essence of that religious philosophy.

Obviously, our Belovèd Immanuel does not realize that his religious picture and Christian metaphysics are constructed on the base of the same principles: Do bad/evil and suffer the results. Do good and receive your reward in an after-world of eternal blessing (pleasure, satisfaction, enjoyment).

The notion of “savior” in the metaphysics of the Indian subcontinent is illuminating: the idea is that God in this world and all worlds does and will always send divine incarnations down into any and all worlds, but especially “prison” or punishment worlds. ‘Vishnu’ is the portrayal of just that Avatar (divine incarnation). And Jesus Christ would be, obviously, an Avatar of salvation from our world when understood as punishment.

In Immanuel’s simplified metaphysics Adam & Eve are emblems of an error whose reward is the sufferings of this world. Jesus is the Divine Avatar whose divine mercy leads trapped souls out of bondage and to spiritual freedom. It is a very simple picture where instead of multitudes of lives there is just one life. You either get it or you don’t. The Eastern understanding is tremendously larger and more expansive.

But the fundamental principles are the same.

My suggestion in your case (Immanuel is a lost cause) is to ease your Karmic Debt by 1) contributing to the 38-Week Email Course and 2) accepting my instructions for making Matzo Ball Soup (which naturally involves ‘blessing the Jews’ and reaping fantastic rewards).

Won’t you please see the Wisdom of my ways?

See The Wheel of Fortune

[Belinda]

But they're not at all mutually inclusive, as it happens. American human rights are not the caste system. British citizenship is not Sharia. Modern jurisprudence in Western climes is not The Code of Hammurabi or tribal vendettas. They don't line up -- at all. Which would mean that "evil," again, means "most (current) Brits or Americans don't like...," a conclusion no more durable than the next wave of immigration or the next change of fashion. Islamists do love violence. That's crystal clear. How can it be "evil" for them to slit throats on a beach, since evil does not have any stable meaning in the vocabulary you're providing?

And again, clearly, BLM or Free Palestine say that burning businesses, blocking streets, beating Jewish, Korean and even black shopkeepers, or throwing bricks at police stations is "good." By what standard do we judge whether their "mostly peaceful protesting" is good or evil?

In short, your definition of "evil," so far, lacks any stable content at all. It can't give even you enough reason for a belief in objective "evil" of any kind.

And if it can't, then how can a secularist even suppose that there is a "problem of evil" in this world to be solved? His own ideology denies that there can be any such thing.

Immanuel, do you perhaps understand the moral theory that evil is absence of good?
I hand it to you, Immanuel, that Good is God who exists , and evil is absence of good.

To answer your concerns that there are different moral codes, this is correct. However all axial age religions' moral codes have in common that what we call The Golden Rule is basic .In Augustine’s view, good is the default state of being; evil is not a rival force but the absence or corruption of that default.

(Axial age:- around 500BC, between 800BC and 200BC. The time of the OT prophets.)

Which religious sect do you belong to ,Immanuel?

When you say "Good is God", do you mean that God = Good? Is it literal to say that "Good" is God? Meaning you worship "Good"? For example: Who or what is God? If "God" = the creator of all that is, are you saying that all that is, is "Good"? Or is some evil too?

When I say "God is good" I mean that Christians , Jews, and Muslims believe God=good. I do not mean that God is good because of what God does and does not do. I mean that God is another name for absolute goodness.
It is true what Alexis Jacobi says that ( I paraphrase) nature is cruel, and the Christian/Jewish/Islamic God created nature as it is with plagues, ice ages, sociopathic men, volcanic eruptions, asteroid strikes, babies born with cleft palates, and so forth. However Christians believe that God moves in mysterious way his wonders to perform so we cannot understand why God made us to suffer so much.

I myself am not a traditional Christian. I probably would not be acceptable to orthodox Xian sects.

Immanuel Can has added to God=Good that God deliberately punishes people for behaving badly. However it's safe to say most Christians/Jews/Muslims believe God's mercy is infinite.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It is true what Alexis Jacobi says that (I paraphrase) nature is cruel, and the Christian/Jewish/Islamic God created nature as it is with plagues, ice ages, sociopathic men, volcanic eruptions, asteroid strikes, babies born with cleft palates, and so forth. However Christians believe that God moves in mysterious way his wonders to perform so we cannot understand why God made us to suffer so much.

I wish to add that a long long while before the Levantine religions emerged, those “ancient Rishis” of ancient India saw the world with similar eyes. They became aware of an impermanent, ever-mutable world where “the rule of fishes” (the violent world of nature where creatures devour creatures) reigned and where terrible mortality was the end for all creatures.

They saw that they existed in just that world, but they also saw that if our world existed, within infinity of time and space, that other worlds — any number of them, and also infinite — must necessarily exist. The world was utterly mysterious just as EXISTENCE is utterly mysterious.

So they focused on the pattern or the prototype of the “dome” of the heavens in our world, supposing that in other worlds there too were such “domes” and inside of them “spaces” where lives — different lives, and life under different conditions — existed.

And they noticed that day and night circulated and “dawn” must be a feature of all possible worlds: the entry of “surya” (sun) into our world and by logical extension all worlds in the cosmos. The dawn is symbolic of our awareness, our awakening, and obviously our seeing on all manner of levels.

All elements in the visible world were understood to have symbolic and allegoric meanings, I guess you might say poetic meanings. Dawn, night, manifestation, cataclysmic endings, birth death rebirth.

The underlying understanding though (speculative knowledge) was that our world is an intermediate world. It has extraordinarily beneficent features but always underneath it the encroaching horror of mortal endings. And everything so fragile. Nothing comes easily. Everything must be struggled for.

Naturally it was supposed, or realized, that there are worlds far more brutal and terrible than ours (hellish realms), and also worlds where bodies existed as vessels of consciousness, but not flesh and blood biological bodies, but bodies of lighter, less destructible, less fragile composition.

So again the Science of Religion and a Science of dealing with incarnation in a specific realm took shape. The science of awareness, what it is, how it is developed. Ethics certainly, moral orders, but also something like spiritual science based in metaphysical concepts.

We need, don’t we, a Master Metaphysician to make sense of ourselves and things in this world …

[seeds]

You are an over-excited, injudicious and prejudiced reader of what I write. I can wish that you’d not behave like this till the proverbial cow jumps over the moon, but I doubt this will change how you read or behave.

Hmm, I'm an "injudicious and prejudiced" reader of what you write, eh?

Might I suggest that you add another two weeks to your 38-week email course in order to explain how one should read (interpret) the following statements which were made approximately two days apart from one another...

I voted for Kamala and that odd man whose name I forget.

I definitely voted against the Democrat regime my dear Sr Semillas.

_______

[Alexis Jacobi]

Do you really want me to explain this?

[Gary Childress]

The logic of agnosticism does NOT imply there is no objective moral standard.

No, but it implies that if there is one, the agnostic doesn't know what it is. So he still has no certainty about morality even existing. He might hope it does, but by his own confession, he doesn't know of a basis for any such thing.

That's what intellectually honest people do, admit to what they don't know.

[Alexis Jacobi]

That's what intellectually honest people do, admit to what they don't know.

You are missing the whole point. In Immanuel’s world there is an absolute Law-Giver. Laws were given, laws will be enforced. Those who have abandoned the god-concept — Immanuel refers to them broadly as secularists — give up any right to make statements about what is right or wrong, good or evil. The individual and his “feelings about things” determine what is right and wrong. But with no absolute authority that has established laws with consequences for infraction, this secularist has no ground to stand on. He cannot make any certain statements. And anyway “it is all relative”.

This is a religious apologist’s gambit and is part of a preaching strategy. It is a trap set for those, like you, who are deeply and profoundly confused about morality. And time and again he sets out that attractive, luscious bait, and time and again you take it. Do you enjoy gristle?

As you might guess I say you will gain more substantial nourishment from a hearty bowl of Matzo Ball Soup! But since you have coldly refused my offer to guide you to it, I guess you’re stuck in a moral conundrum by your own choice.

[Gary Childress]

That's what intellectually honest people do, admit to what they don't know.

You are missing the whole point. In Immanuel’s world there is an absolute Law-Giver. Laws were given, laws will be enforced. Those who have abandoned the god-concept — Immanuel refers to them broadly as secularists — give up any right to make statements about what is right or wrong, good or evil. The individual and his “feelings about things” determine what is right and wrong. But with no absolute authority that has established laws with consequences for infraction, this secularist has no ground to stand on. He cannot make any certain statements. And anyway “it is all relative”.

This is a religious apologist’s gambit and is part of a preaching strategy. It is a trap set for those, like you, who are deeply and profoundly confused about morality. And time and again he sets out that attractive, luscious bait, and time and again you take it. Do you enjoy gristle?

As you might guess I say you will gain more substantial nourishment from a hearty bowl of Matzo Ball Soup! But since you have coldly refused my offer to guide you to it, I guess you’re stuck in a moral conundrum by your own choice.

I seem to be "standing on ground". Is it not there?

[Alexis Jacobi]

I seem to be "standing on ground". Is it not there?

In truth you seem to have almost no ground. In a range of different senses.

Can you define any metaphysical principles that are your guiding principles? Be honest.

[Gary Childress]

I seem to be "standing on ground". Is it not there?

In truth you seem to have almost no ground. In a range of different senses.

Can you define any metaphysical principles that are your guiding principles? Be honest.

Do I need to?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Do I need to?

Not the right question. “What is the cost to a man who does not have defined metaphysical principles?” is a better question.

Or “What happens to a man when he has lost a sense of metaphysical ground and flounders in a no-place?” would be far more demanding questions.

I think that in his childish way Immanuel does attempt such a question. I mean he is pretty aware (in his limited way) of what has happened in the culture when grounding was lost.