Christianity

[Harbal]

Judge me for what, hurting his feelings because he created a messed up world for me. Sorry. Can't say I care about God's feelings any more than mine have been spared.

God is neither the cause of nor the answer to your problems, Gary.

[Immanuel Can]

Conveniently forgetting that God created humans just as they are.

Actually, no, He didn't.

Biblically, He created them with two features: moral innocence and volitional freedom. What they did with the latter is what accounts for the failure of the former.

That's nonsense.

I'm just telling you the truth. You can take it, or leave it. But it's the truth.

Nobody said "We want to be petty and violent" and God replied " Okay, then that's how I'm going to make you."

Nor did I. That's a caricature, nothing I ever said.

It was man who decided what he wanted...and it was to exert his complete autonomy, and to mistrust and alienate himself from God. The rest is a consequence of man having torn himself out of relationship to God. Nothing good happens by rejecting God. When you do that, you take on a whole package of the characteristics that are antithetical to His nature.

If you don't love the Light, you become dark.

If a table is wobbly, you blame the carpenter, not the table.

Tables have no volitional freedom. If they did, we could blame them for anything they chose to do.

[Gary Childress]

Judge me for what, hurting his feelings because he created a messed up world for me. Sorry. Can't say I care about God's feelings any more than mine have been spared.

God is neither the cause of nor the answer to your problems, Gary.

How do you figure that?

[seeds]

...we (I mean Occidental peoples but perhaps all peoples) are in an enormous paradigm shift where -- really -- it has become extremely difficult to define what god is.

Actually, Gus, it has become almost too easy to define what God is.

I suggest that God is simply the fully-matured "adult version" of what we humans are.
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[phyllo]

I'm just telling you the truth. You can take it, or leave it. But it's the truth.

You don't' have a monopoly on truth.

Get off your high horse.

Nor did I. That's a caricature, nothing I ever said.

I didn't say that you did.

I'm pointing out that no human decided to be as they are. It was 100% God's decision.

It was man who decided what he wanted...and it was to exert his complete autonomy, and to mistrust and alienate himself from God. The rest is a consequence of man having torn himself out of relationship to God. Nothing good happens by rejecting God. When you do that, you take on a whole package of the characteristics that are antithetical to His nature.

If you don't love the Light, you become dark.

Tables have no volitional freedom. If they did, we could blame them for anything they chose to do.

Humans have the volition that God gave them.

If God had given them an aversion to porn, for example, then they would not be producing porn. They would not be seeking porn. Porn would not be a problem.

But God made it seem that porn is good.

Why make porn attractive at all?

[phyllo]

Judge me for what, hurting his feelings because he created a messed up world for me. Sorry. Can't say I care about God's feelings any more than mine have been spared.

God is neither the cause of nor the answer to your problems, Gary.

That's from the Simpsons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXyrYMxa-VI

[Harbal]

God is neither the cause of nor the answer to your problems, Gary.

How do you figure that?

Because if there were a God, the chance of it being that ridiculous character from the Bible is negligible.

[Alexis Jacobi]

“As I live, says the Lord, to Me every knee will bow,
And every tongue will confess to God.”

You have not been paying attention. Your quote is the Hebrew version and it expresses something unique to the Hebrew mind: absolute dictatorial control. But thank heavens this is not 'god' speaking but a priest-class.

You accrue guilt to yourself to the degree that you front for these sorts of conceptions!

The proper model is not a knee-bowed slave but a willing accomplice.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I'm just telling you the truth. You can take it, or leave it. But it's the truth.

Well, I would suggest that it is a truth-claim. It is also truth-esque. But there really are other ways to look at the entire issue of human incarnation into a world like ours and with a transcendental divinity overseeing the soul's struggles and passage.

And actually the either yes or either no is also false. What is needed is to understand absolutists claims made by a priest-class. The other is that, indeed, life itself may present us with issues that we must resolve and that we do require knowledge to make our way through it. But what knowledge? Administered by whom?

Are there truths to be learned in life? Most certainly. That is the stuff of the finest and most acute knowledge strains.

So I take a need, even a requirement, to take life seriously, but I leave your gloom & doom approach, the purpose of which is to coerce and control people. To the degree that you front that, you are involved in something I say is extremely negative.

[Immanuel Can]

“As I live, says the Lord, to Me every knee will bow,
And every tongue will confess to God.”

Your quote is the Hebrew version...

The whole Bible is essentially Hebrew. And it came from Romans, actually, though it also quotes the OT.

But it's a claim of fact. You will, or you won't. And if you will, you will. It won't matter if you say, "This is all too Hebrew to me." Then that's what it will be.

[Dubious]

His worth, such as it is, is just below a no name brand of corn flakes.

One day, I promise you, you'll be regretting you ever said that. That's all I can tell you now.

Don't worry! There is nothing in the Bible I find in the least threatening or intimidating unless I lived in the Middle Ages and still believed Adam and Eve were our original parents or that god forged man in his own image. The bible only has historical or archival value as the primary text of Christianity. It's truly ancient ideas and affirmations no-longer apply. The Western World has been stuck in that epic pothole long enough.

[Alexis Jacobi]

“As I live, says the Lord, to Me every knee will bow,
And every tongue will confess to God.”

Your quote is the Hebrew version...

The whole Bible is essentially Hebrew. And it came from Romans, actually, though it also quotes the OT.

But it's a claim of fact. You will, or you won't. And if you will, you will. It won't matter if you say, "This is all too Hebrew to me." Then that's what it will be.

No, it is a claim which may refer to universal truths of a metaphysical, existential sort. And they are expressed in different ways in various traditions.

I focus on the Hebrew because, it seems evident, they reduce man to a slave. Make of that what you will. But it’s not a healthy game. It’s imperious, domineering, coercive and manipulative.

I propose that your truths contain lies.

[Immanuel Can]

I'm pointing out that no human decided to be as they are.

Sure they did.

You're choosing to be as you are (no offense intended): why would it be a surprise if anybody else were to?

Humans have the volition that God gave them.

The ability was given, because freedom is the sine qua non of identity, of personhood, of choice. However, the choice was not prescribed. As Milton once so sagely put it, man was created "sufficient to have stood, but free to fall."

And the consequences are on the chooser.

[Immanuel Can]

His worth, such as it is, is just below a no name brand of corn flakes.

One day, I promise you, you'll be regretting you ever said that. That's all I can tell you now.

Don't worry!

I'm not the one whose account this falls to.

[Immanuel Can]

I focus on the Hebrew because, it seems evident, they reduce man to a slave.

"It seems evident," does it? Well, I think you'll find that in terms of "reducing man to a slave," the Colonial, the African, the Arab, the Marxist, and lately the Western cultures have it all over anything you can attribute to the Hebrews. But the fact is that man's chief "slavery" comes from his own nature, not from outside of him.