Gary's Corner

[Gary Childress]

Religion can be truly nauseating sometimes. I live in a country more steeped in superstition than I realized. Sometimes it feels as if no one is a friend I can confide in without sounding like an alien from Mars. Say something unflattering about a person's God and the demon comes out of them.

I woke up this morning to a terrible feeling of having been used and discarded by the woman I was in love with, to whom I gave all my life savings, mistakenly thinking it would have any effect at all on her feelings toward me. I hadn't thought about that in a while. So it was a little surprising that it popped into my head out of the blue. Not a good feeling to start off the day. But such is life.

She's a Catholic.

[Immanuel Can]

Seriously, Gary; do better. It's boring to talk to people who are willfully ignorant of even the basics.

So in other words, according to the passage you cite, Jesus was cursing Israel. How does that change anything I said?

You didn't read it. He wasn't cursing the whole nation, just the unfruitfulness of the regime of the time.

If you thought for one second, you'd realize that ALL his disciples and followers were Jewish. So common was Jewishness among them, in fact, the first church counsel had to be convened to discuss the question of whether or not it was even possible for a Gentile to be a follower of Messiah. Also Jewish were the wicked Pharisees. In other words, not all of Israel was behaving as Israel. And those that were not were under the judgment of God, just as they had been during the Assyrian regime and the Babylonian captivity. Becoming unfaithful was a national passtime in Israel, if you read the Torah, from the Golden Calf to the rejection of Messiah Himself. And every time, God Himself would restore the nation.

So the fig tree was a symbol for the possibilities of national Israel that were being suffocated by the unfruitfulness of the Pharisees and rulers. And it's a pretty great symbol, actually. But you mistook it for a mere act of petulance.

How shallow, then was that reading?

[Immanuel Can]

Religion can be truly nauseating sometimes. I live in a country more steeped in superstition than I realized. Sometimes it feels as if no one is a friend I can confide in without sounding like an alien from Mars. Say something unflattering about a person's God and the demon comes out of them.

God doesn't have "demons." They belong to the other side. Sometimes, telling a person they're blaspheming gives them an opportunity to repent. They may not like it, but it's the only favour that does them any good.

[mickthinks]

Can you possibly be unaware that things like this have been well-explained long ago, and multiple times, by many, many different theologians?

Can Manny possibly be unaware that he is talking sh*t? Nothing about the story of the cursed fig tree was explained long ago or last century or last week or on any other time scale. Insights have been offered which may or may not seem valuable to some of us, and if we find them particularly cogent and helpful, we may feel inclined to elevate them to the status of “explanations”. More fools us.

[Immanuel Can]

Can you possibly be unaware that things like this have been well-explained long ago, and multiple times, by many, many different theologians?

Can Manny possibly be unaware that he is talking sh*t? Nothing about the story of the cursed fig tree was explained long ago or last century or last week or on any other time scale. Insights have been offered which may or may not seem valuable to some of us, and if we find them particularly cogent and helpful, we may feel inclined to elevate them to the status of “explanations”. More fools us.

Ask yourself if what you say even makes sense. Your assumption would have to be that for 2,000 years, no theologian noticed that passage, until suddenly, 20th C. skeptics did. Up to that point, nobody had any "insights" about it, and they aren't "explanations," because 20th C. skeptics don't even know what they are.

Really? Really?

[Gary Childress]

Life is an empty, hollow shit show to watch. Who in their right mind signs up for this? People are being murdered as we speak and for Abraham's followers, it's a far greater sin to talk trash about the alleged God who lets it all happen.

[Immanuel Can]

Life is an empty, hollow shit show to watch. Who in their right mind signs up for this? People are being murdered as we speak and for Abraham's followers, it's a far greater sin to talk trash about the alleged God who lets it all happen.

You think that what's happening right now is approved by God? You don't think that human will has anything to do with it? Or does it occur to you that it might have a tad to do with the Ayatollah and his cronies, the people of Persia, the Israeli airforce and President Trump, among others?

Who are you blaming, Gary? Because if it's all God's fault, then it's not anybody else's, is it?

[Gary Childress]

Life is an empty, hollow shit show to watch. Who in their right mind signs up for this? People are being murdered as we speak and for Abraham's followers, it's a far greater sin to talk trash about the alleged God who lets it all happen.

You think that what's happening right now is approved by God? You don't think that human will has anything to do with it? Or does it occur to you that it might have a tad to do with the Ayatollah and his cronies, the people of Persia, the Israeli airforce and President Trump, among others?

Who are you blaming, Gary? Because if it's all God's fault, then it's not anybody else's, is it?

A God could prevent the destruction being ravaged on the Earth by the few who seem to control the levers of the human world. But humans aren't in control of this world in any case. The world runs on action and reaction. And there is no utopia or way out of this mess. God gave us a world with insoluble problems. Everything humanity has tried has failed to bring utopia. The theists have failed. the political theorists have failed. The economists have failed. The physicists have failed. If there were a way to bring peace and beneficence to the world for us, then there would be peace and beneficence by now, but there isn't because there is no way to bring those things.

There's not going to be a "second coming" and Christ didn't even bring peace in the "first coming" anyway. People are pickled and buried in hopes that they will be "resurrected", what a joke. A pickled body is not going to EVER produce consciousness again. We're born to die and everything in between is either imperative or else a barren existence. Outside of dog eat dog, there's no point to life any more than an animal in a zoo created by a zookeeper thinks there is a point to the life. Every being in this world was created to live at the expense of other beings in this world. And without that impulse driving us, there is only pointless monotony.

The world is a giant insane asylum. Except most people don't think they're inmates of it.

[Immanuel Can]

Life is an empty, hollow shit show to watch. Who in their right mind signs up for this? People are being murdered as we speak and for Abraham's followers, it's a far greater sin to talk trash about the alleged God who lets it all happen.

You think that what's happening right now is approved by God? You don't think that human will has anything to do with it? Or does it occur to you that it might have a tad to do with the Ayatollah and his cronies, the people of Persia, the Israeli airforce and President Trump, among others?

Who are you blaming, Gary? Because if it's all God's fault, then it's not anybody else's, is it?

A God could prevent the destruction being ravaged on the Earth by the few who seem to control the levers of the human world.

So God isn't the only one who has a say about this?

But you think it might be better if he overrode that will, and prevented people from doing evil things?

How many evil things, Gary? Just some, or all of them?

But humans aren't in control of this world in any case. The world runs on action and reaction.

If that were right, there'd be nobody to blame...and the secularist would be right to tell you to quit imagining things that aren't real, and just "get over it."

So who's telling you the thing you think is the truth?

Everything humanity has tried has failed to bring utopia.

Great realization. So let's not try again, making the same mistakes humanity has always made.

There's not going to be a "second coming"

What's your evidence for that? That people die? It's not sufficient evidence, of course. There's no deduction from "people die" to "people can't be resurrected by the God who made them in the first place," is there?

We're born to die and everything in between is either imperative or else a barren existence.

Yes, that's what the secularist will tell you. He'll also tell you you can't do anything about it, and that it's stupid to complain.

[Gary Childress]

If there is a God, then I hope God is benevolent toward humans, because if AIs become greater than us and autonomous, then perhaps the only thing standing in the way of human irrelevance is the creator of all that is (including the creator of the creators of AI). Can a benevolent God reign in AI if it becomes necessary for the safety of humanity?

[Immanuel Can]

If there is a God, then I hope God is benevolent toward humans

Well, He is...to all those who will accept His kindness. But some don't. And they get whatever they ask for.

Can a benevolent God reign in AI if it becomes necessary for the safety of humanity?

Who says "safety" is even the right goal? How about "significance"?

What's really interesting, though, is that you'd trust AI, a thing that you know is totally constructed by that same "humanity" you're anxious about, with your "safety," and even regard it as "necessary," and would never trust the Ultimate Necessary Being.

Interesting choice, that.

[Gary Childress]

If there is a God, then I hope God is benevolent toward humans

Well, He is...to all those who will accept His kindness. But some don't. And they get whatever they ask for.

Can a benevolent God reign in AI if it becomes necessary for the safety of humanity?

Who says "safety" is even the right goal? How about "significance"?

What's really interesting, though, is that you'd trust AI, a thing that you know is totally constructed by that same "humanity" you're anxious about, with your "safety," and even regard it as "necessary," and would never trust the Ultimate Necessary Being.

Interesting choice, that.

Don't be a jerk.

[Gary Childress]

What's really interesting, though, is that you'd trust AI,

I do no such thing, IDIOT! READ WHAT IS POSTED FOR GOD"S SAKE AND QUIT MAKING UP SHIT!

[Gary Childress]

If there is a God, then I hope God is benevolent toward humans

Well, He is...to all those who will accept His kindness. But some don't. And they get whatever they ask for.

Great! I'd like to find a special female friend that I can love and who will love me back and settle down with me some day. Let's see if I get what I ask for. Or maybe God only gives a person Hell if we rant in anger.

[Immanuel Can]

If there is a God, then I hope God is benevolent toward humans

Well, He is...to all those who will accept His kindness. But some don't. And they get whatever they ask for.

Great! I'd like to find a special female friend that I can love and who will love me back and settle down with me some day.

I didn't say he was a "Santa Claus" for your every wish. I don't think any Theist thinks that the Divine Being is there to do our bidding.

As I've said before: one comes to Him on His terms, not terms we dictate.