Christianity

[Dontaskme]

There's nobody so adept at bending truth as a teenager.

That's their job to be malleable. Truth for a teenager is what they've been taught by their indoctrinators. While the wise owl will always question relative and object truths.

Gosh, you are sounding more and more like Jordan Peterson every day. Have you got some kind of fetish for the guy?

Urgh!! (((((smile))))(●'◡'●)

[Dontaskme]

Owl, never mind lace and the other conformists. You post and quote as you see fit. They aren't the boss of you.

It's just basic common courtesy and consideration to the reader. But sometimes, it's just quicker and easier to be lazy, no problem.

[Immanuel Can]

Gosh, you are sounding more and more like Jordan Peterson every day.

Thank you. You're very kind.

[owl of Minerva]

owl: As to evolution it takes place on three levels; physical, psychological, and spiritual.

IC:
We actually have no proof for any of the three, in regard to human affairs. Human physiology, psychology and spiritual condition have remained consistent over all the years of recorded history we have. Any appeal to a belief that human beings are "getting better" in some way will find no grounds in history. It will have to come from some sort of gratutious faith.
II agree with you that we are between a rock and hard place; similar to the hell of Sartre’s existentialism.

owl:

Then if you agree “with the hell of Sartre’s existentialism” while not seeing any hope for the evolution of human nature your view is very pessimistic. You do not agree that “Lives of great men all remind us we should make our lives sublime and departing leave footprints on the sands of time.” You believe that humans will never change and are incapable of changing. Was that Christ’s message?

IC:
No, i think Sartre was too grim.

I understand his reasoning, and if I believed, as he believed, that we are simply "thrown into" existence without purpose, meaning or direction, I suppose I might be similarly grim about it. But it's ridiculous, I think, to call this world "Hell." It has both suffering and beauty in it, and Hell has absolutely none of the latter.

The truth about the latter Existentialists -- like Sartre, Beckett or Camus, is that they were not actually convinced the world was totally awful. Rather, their sense of suffering came from being hung up between life as suffering and life as beauty and joy -- (as Hardy put it) "the gleam and the gloom," not from being shuttered in some stygian pit of unrelenting misery.

But I wonder what you think of that.

owl:

Now you think he was too grim. I do not know what he was in his heart. I am not an Existentialist nor a fatalist when it comes to human nature. If the Existentialists had periods when they saw life as good, fine. I was referring to their philosophy as they expressed it. Your view of human nature has a dark Puritan streak to it but you may deny that and switch to being an optimistic about it in your next post.

[Dontaskme]

Gosh, you are sounding more and more like Jordan Peterson every day.

Thank you. You're very kind.

You'd think he'd practice what he preaches, the guy has a permanent dreary demeanor. His head has been up his arse for way too long.

They say, misery loves company.

[Immanuel Can]

IC:
II agree with you that we are between a rock and hard place; similar to the hell of Sartre’s existentialism.

Please note: The above is something you said...nothing I said. I have no idea why you're attributing it to me. Did you get it from somebody else's comment, and then mistakenly link it to me, for some reason? Or did you actually mistake your own words for mine? I can't tell.

What I DID write was as follows:

IC:
No, i think Sartre was too grim.

I understand his reasoning, and if I believed, as he believed, that we are simply "thrown into" existence without purpose, meaning or direction, I suppose I might be similarly grim about it. But it's ridiculous, I think, to call this world "Hell." It has both suffering and beauty in it, and Hell has absolutely none of the latter.

The truth about the latter Existentialists -- like Sartre, Beckett or Camus, is that they were not actually convinced the world was totally awful. Rather, their sense of suffering came from being hung up between life as suffering and life as beauty and joy -- (as Hardy put it) "the gleam and the gloom," not from being shuttered in some stygian pit of unrelenting misery.

But I wonder what you think of that.

To which you, in some apparent state of confusion on who said what, said:

Now you think he was too grim.

Answer: I always did, and never said anything else.

Your view of human nature has a dark Puritan streak

Not "Puritan." They had a different theology. But I do agree with them, as any sensible and observant person must surely do, that somethings seriouslly wrong with human nature. I think there's no escaping that fact.

And if there's no God, as the Atheists wish to tell us, then whom do they have left to blame for the existence of evil? And surely, it cannot be true that all Atheists are so wicked that they don't recognize that any evil things happen in the world. But on what basis do they say that anything is actually "evil"? The concept makes no sense, in their worldview.

It reminds me of what C.S. Lewis later wrote about his young days as an Atheist. He wrote:

"I was at that time living like many atheists; in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with him for creating a world. Why should creatures have the burden of existence forced on them without their consent?"

Of course, none of that makes sense. You can't be angry at God if there is no God, and you can't be angry with somebody for "not existing." Since Atheism says God did NOT create the world, how can Lewis have been angry with the God he didn't believe in having done something Lewis didn't believe he did? And for an Atheist, how can whatever is, whatever state of affairs happens to exist, not be the "best" thing? What else is there? So how could Lewis be angry at all?

Atheism has no basis for complaint. According to Atheism, if life is hard, that's just how life is. There's nobody to be angry at, and nothing to be angry about, and nobody to care if one feels angry at all.

owl: You believe that humans will never change and are incapable of changing. Was that Christ’s message?

Christ's message was that men can't change themselves, but God can change men.

Remember? John 3: 16.

[Immanuel Can]

Gosh, you are sounding more and more like Jordan Peterson every day.

Thank you. You're very kind.

They say, misery loves company.

DAM, it's getting to the point where my lack of interest in any opinion from you is becoming so small that science is yet to invent the instrument capable of measuring it.

Drop the drama. it's sooooooo boring. And it's not winning you any points at all.

[Belinda]

Immanuel Can wrote:

Christ's message was that men can't change themselves, but God can change men.

Remember? John 3: 16.

If God can change despairing men to hopeful men, and can change bad men to good men, why does He not always do so?

[Dontaskme]

Thank you. You're very kind.

They say, misery loves company.

DAM, it's getting to the point where my lack of interest in any opinion from you is becoming so small that science is yet to invent the instrument capable of measuring it.

Drop the drama. it's sooooooo boring. And it's not winning you any points at all.

It's always about point scoring with you scientists isn't it. Yawn!

I do my own science, I do not need others to tell me what I already know, thank you very much.

I'm just playing with myself here, it's not a crime.





.

[Immanuel Can]

If God can change despairing men to hopeful men, and can change bad men to good men, why does He not always do so?

Because many men will not permit it.

Not everybody wants to change. Change starts with admitting you're no what you ought to be. That's painful and humiliating. Then it means accepting one's helplessness to change oneself. That's also hard to take. Then it means asking God to do what you cannot do. That's trusting, and trust is frightening. And finally, it means life will never be the same again. That's also disconcerting.

So lots of people simply would rather be what they are. From God's side, their freedom to choose is inviolable; because without freedom, no relationship is even possible.

So they get what they have chosen, even when they choose badly.

[Immanuel Can]

I'm just playing with myself here, it's not a crime.

Well, "playing" is probably something one should give up at a certain point. It's fine for children, but we all need to grow up sometime.

[Dontaskme]

I'm just playing with myself here, it's not a crime.

Well, "playing" is probably something one should give up at a certain point. It's fine for children, but we all need to grow up sometime.

Infinity can't grow ...I thought your God would have told you that simple truth..

Why are you so full of boring cliches?

Grow up, what's that supposed to mean, don't grow down...

Even when your God told you to be like little children.

[Dontaskme]

Christ's message was that men can't change themselves, but God can change men.

Remember? John 3: 16.

God is another word for Absolute.

Man is a conceptual belief, and only a belief can change, from belief to no-belief, from no-belief comes all belief.

Clarity, is this immediate indistinguishable absolute unchanging truth.

You are the absolute truth. Even when you lie, that is the absolute truth. Absolute Truth does not lie, it only imagines it does, in order that man may live...in this conception.

[Dontaskme]

Immanuel Can wrote:

Christ's message was that men can't change themselves, but God can change men.

Remember? John 3: 16.

If God can change despairing men to hopeful men, and can change bad men to good men, why does He not always do so?

That is such a good point Belinda, I love the way you think.

God cannot change men, because God fucked up when he actually believed that he could give men free will...but that's just some crazy belief anyway, so it's irrelevant.

The absolute truth is that 'will' is not given to you...'will' is absolutely who you are, and it's totally free to be.

To be given something means you never had it, until it was given to you, which is a load of baloney, I mean how can you be given what you've already got.

IC's just clutching at straws, he's read some story in a book called the bible and has mistakenly taken the story to be actual reality. It's a common delusion most if not all christians make. They literally mistake the written word to be real, when it's just a frigging fictional story superimposed upon the real which is absolutely pure. Any distinction is purely indistinguishable. IC, hasn't quite learnt to whitewash himself yet, he's still young on the path to all out nothingness.

[owl of Minerva]

By Immanuel Can:

“Remember John 3:16”

owl of Minerva:

I probed and was baffled but I finally get you, where you are coming from; how you perceive reality. I engage in open dialogue, I do not engage with beliefs, although I could, I choose not to.

I am familiar with John 3:16 and understand it differently than you do. Suffice it to say that it has to do with consciousness, where the focus is, but as we know consciousness remains the great unknown for all the disciplines. Until there is light shed on it from whatever source, I would expect it will be physics, and its meaning enters the lexicon it is useless to engage in discussions about it, other than those engaged in by philosophers who, for the most part, approach it with open minds. Otherwise it would be the equivalent of discussing electricity or the electromagnetic field in 499 A.D., the lowest point of the Dark Ages. It would be a futile project.

So continue with your belief, I will not engage with it.