Philosophy Now Forum

Immanuel Can wrote: or North Korea right now: are the good guys in control there?

I don't think North Korea is a particularly good example, they are in control of the "Bad Guys" and they are in the cultural "Dark Ages" compared to the rest of the world.

AS wrote:
(M...do you see what I mean when I say I am not a good communicator!)
Help...is this thing on...hello. Anybody out there understand me enough to translate?

Stop with the 'not a good communicator' bit. You're doing great - as are others.
Like I said - I'm outta here; tuning in to German now.
Look up 'schnoodle noodle' - I'm sure that you will have fun applying it, as you feel fit
Feel free to PM me.

artisticsolution wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote:
Honestly, I don't really "get" any of this as personally applicable, nor of its putative application to the Christians I know. I can only think you're reacting to some phenomenon known to you but outside my present experience. The views you attribute to me, I don't happen to hold; and the views you attribute to Christians I don't recognize. So I'm quite at a loss as to know how to get a handle on all this. A lot of it seems deeply felt but also not well-organized or fully articulated yet. I'm happy to wait until you can get your thoughts together and decide what you want to say, but I really don't know what the required response is here.

No, I am making sense...talking to you...and what you have said in this entire thread...not just what you have said here. You, through this entire thread, have eluded to the fact you think there is a way to tell if a Christian is a 'true' Christian. correct??

He has to believe there is such a things as a true christian because he is making an unwarrantable suggestion that moral law, is objective.
Trouble is that he would have to do more than just say morality is objective, he'd have to prove it - which he cannot.
And for this reason he avoids saying what is or is not a true christian, because that task would demonstrate the weakness of his claim about objectivity.

It's a complete no brainer, that for the entire history of xity, people have picked and chosen part of both scriptures that have suited their purposes, relative to the historical and cultural conditions in which they found themselves and selected to built the world that think ought to be built. "True christianity" is a never uniform and every changing thing. These are the historical facts, and utterly refute any attempt to place the ideas of christianity as some sort of uniform or objective truth. Far from it.

Immanuel Can wrote: or North Korea right now: are the good guys in control there?

Millions of people think so. Million also support ISIL too. I don't agree with them. I also think the Pope is an arsehole too, and can give you reasons.

I don't like Korea, and nor do many other people that read the western press, but I don't like you and think you are a bad guy too. I don't see democracy, such as it is, any special case for good or evil.

For a thing to be good or evil in an absolute of objective sense - you need to do more than get people to agree with you, about who is a nice guy and who is a bad guy.

"I would rather never to have lived, than to worry 99% of the time that I need to take up arms against the world. What type of fucked up life is that?"

But you are alive, and self-defending is reality, so: stand or kneel...your choice.

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"So the good guys always win, Henry?"

Nope, there are no 'good' or 'bad' guys (outside of the eye of the beholder).

Again: the one who (usually) wins is the one who applies power (superior or more wisely applied inferior) in a way that aligns most closely with reality (sometimes, though, dumb luck intervenes and the insane [as defined above] win the day...it's a crap shoot).

All this 'good/bad', 'right/wrong' hooey is your albatross, not mine.

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"There's just power. Nothing else."

Pretty much, yeah.

More accurately: there are those who successfully apply power (and this can take a lot of forms, as can the application of it) and those who fail.

The 'moral dimension' is a fiction and (again) solely in the eye of the beholder.

Almost forgot: I don't give a flip what Nietzsche had to say about anything...that's another albatross that doesn't belong to me.

artisticsolution wrote:You, through this entire thread, have said that you believe when Jesus said ' you will know them by their fruits..." that he meant you can tell if a christian is a true Christian or not. by what they say and do. Correct?

Yes.

What I am asking you is what makes you think you are different from you fellow Christians?

Personally, nothing. But one can only BE a Christian by obeying Christ. That's analytical in the name itself. Obedience is entailed.

How is their 'fruit' any different from yours that you may judge them by their 'fruits'...but then still think you are a "true" Christian, and not them? Couldn't they just as well look at your 'fruits' and say you aren't a "true" Christian since you admitted that you sin?

Well, as John says, everybody does sin occasionally, because all are fallible. But it's quite a different thing to persist in it, to insist on it, to revel in it, to excuse it, or to seek no repentance and want no forgiveness for it. That's the implication of "fruit": fruit isn' t a thing a tree produces just once, or on one occasion -- it's a thing that a tree does over and over again, out of the deep nature of what it is.

Aristotle had this right. Habit is more important than accident. Anyone can fail, but when a person fails repeatedly, unapologetically, without conscience and long enough, he's formed a whole pattern of life, which comes to characterize his whole existence. His life is a moral failure. It's no longer just that his action was bad, but that his character was. And the One who puts the seal on that judgment is not mankind, but God.

If both of you sin....and both of you are suspicious of each other...thinking each other are not 'true' Christians...then why do you think your sin is less than your fellow Christian's sin? If you look at them and they look at you...who is right?

Ah, but I must not maintain my own protestations of rightness. I have to admit my wrongness and forsake it, asking forgiveness, and especially from the only One who ultimately matters in these things, because He's the one against whom are all sins, in the end.

I don't know you, for example. But you may well be a much better person than me, according to the way human beings as a whole go. But your goodness or mine is not the issue, because both of us have done things of which we are not proud, I'm sure. If either of us has a hope of being forgiven, it's by the goodness of God, not our own.

In short, I'm not here to protest my goodness, but to admit my badness, and to be rescued from it not by my own efforts but by the rescue from God. And I have no reason to boast of my own specialness. If I have any boast, it's in Him.

That's why my name's not "I Can," but "Immanuel Can." He can: I cannot.

thedoc wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote: or North Korea right now: are the good guys in control there?

I don't think North Korea is a particularly good example, they are in control of the "Bad Guys" and they are in the cultural "Dark Ages" compared to the rest of the world.

Well, it's a very good example of evil being in charge, I think we'd all agree. Power is not guaranteed only to the good. Wretched, "dark" and retrograde forces can also possess plenty of it.

henry quirk wrote:Almost forgot: I don't give a flip what Nietzsche had to say about anything...that's another albatross that doesn't belong to me.

As they say, "Not my circus, not my monkeys"? Fair enough, from one perspective. I can't hand you "monkeys" that aren't yours.

What I find interesting about Nietzsche, though, is that, to borrow a phrase, he's a "brave, bad man." Bad, yes...but also bravely so, more willing than others to work out the consequences of his own worldview.

Now, of course I believe that as an atheist, his views were premised on falsehoods; but once he accepted those premises, especially the "death of God," Nietzsche worked at developing them to their own logical conclusions. That's the gist of his famous "Madman's Speech." He asks how we human beings have managed to wipe out all stars...to remove all compass points of morality, if you will..to pull down the heavens and turn every church into a tombstone. He asks, "Is not this deed to great for us?" How can we live without God, the basis of all morality? Where will we go now, he asks, except "away from all suns," that is, away from any moral light at all.

And I have to give Nietzsche his due: he had courage, if not wisdom. I admire him for the former.

In the end, I don't think he quite succeeded personally in being fully consistent in his atheism, but he came much closer than most of our more timid atheists today. And atheists generally seem to recognize this. Many praise him as a sort of secular "saint" of atheism. You're more likely to hear "Nietzsche said..." from them than you are to hear "Freud said," or "Marx said." He's their poster boy. And yet I never meet atheists who have the courage to live as he told them to, beyond all categories of good and evil. And the reason I never meet them is that if they exist, they're probably in maximum security cells.

To be a rationally-consistent atheist is to be a complete amoralist...that is, to be "moral" when it suits, or "immoral" when it suits, and to do it with equal enthusiasm because you don't believe a whit in either category. That's what makes one a Nietzschean "superman." But it makes one a horrible human being too.

As you say, though...he's not your monkey....or albatross

Immanuel Can wrote:... And it was followed by the rise of the Soviet Union, ...

Wasn't followed, the SU was the bulwark against Nazism. This 'good' guy 'bad' guy thing can be a bit blind as just after the end of WWII the Soviets('bad' guys presumably) had no nukes but lived in a world where the States('good' guys presumably) were pointing a few hundred at them, what might have happened if their paranoia hadn't been fed?

Or look at Syria ...

Who are the 'good' guys or 'bad' guys in this situation?

Much of the world is pretty messed up: but most of us on this board just happen to live in some of those places where-- so far -- the good guys have won. ...

And yet these 'good' guys in the last few years have killed a few million adults and children?

I don't see any guarantees, though...certainly none from a secular perspective.

Where from a religious perspective do you see any? All I see is a return to the Wars of Religion, even the Buddhists appear to be developing a violent fundamentalist wing now

Power isn't a moral quality. It plays no favourites based on "good" and "bad." That's why Nietzsche thought we were "beyond good and evil" now. There's just power. Nothing else. Even secular morality, thought Nietzsche, is really just a power game cloaked in illegitimate moral language.

Given your 'God' is supposed to be all-powerful' does that make 'it' immoral(amoral?) and the 'user' of an illegitimate moral 'language'?

Immanuel Can wrote:...
To be a rationally-consistent atheist is to be a complete amoralist...that is, to be "moral" when it suits, or "immoral" when it suits, and to do it with equal enthusiasm because you don't believe a whit in either category. That's what makes one a Nietzschean "superman." ...

No it's not, it's to create one's morality and live with it to the death without support or excuse to some 'God', this is why a 'Nietzschean' would have very few morals as it's easier to not break them.

Arising_uk wrote:And yet these 'good' guys in the last few years have killed a few million adults and children?

I'm not praising the "good guys," Arising...I'm just pointing out that what Henry says isn't universally true. Sometimes power goes to the bad guys; and I think you're agreeing with me on that.

All I see is a return to the Wars of Religion, even the Buddhists appear to be developing a violent fundamentalist wing now

Yes, in places like Myanmar, you mean? Agreed. But as for the "Wars of Religion," I think you have no worries. It will be one particular religion against the world this time, I think. Still, mankind has never needed religion in order to create wars. All the wars of the 20th Century were non-religious.

Given your 'God' is supposed to be all-powerful' does that make 'it' immoral(amoral?) and the 'user' of an illegitimate moral 'language'?

Well, if our moral language has reference to anything, it would have to be to categories affirmed by the character of God. If not, it's just nonsense language, imaginary values placed on brute facts, as Hume said. So on the assumption that God exists (which you're compelling here by your hypothetical), it would be theoretically impossible for such language to be "illegitimate."

However, I have the feeling that's not quite the question you're trying to pose. I'm content to wait for you to modify it as you see best, then I'll try to respond better to that.

Arising_uk wrote:No it's not, it's to create one's morality and live with it to the death without support or excuse to some 'God', this is why a 'Nietzschean' would have very few morals as it's easier to not break them.

Ah, but once you've felled all the trees...exposed the concept of "morality" as nothing but an illegitimate power game...then there are no more trees to hide behind. No morals can henceforth be truly believed...so the atheist's inventions-of-convenience (morals) fall by his own axe.

"To be a rationally-consistent atheist is to be a complete amoralist...that is, to be "moral" when it suits, or "immoral" when it suits, and to do it with equal enthusiasm because you don't believe a whit in either category."

Yeah, that sounds right.

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"That's what makes one a Nietzschean "superman."

Haven't read enough of Fred to know if this is the case or not.

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"But it makes one a horrible human being too."

Eye of the beholder, Mannie.

henry quirk wrote:

"But it makes one a horrible human being too."

Eye of the beholder, Mannie.

Maybe.

But even among atheists, not many "beholders" want a business deal with a guy whose word or contract is no longer binding than his convenience. And not many "beholders" want to marry someone whose fidelity is contingent upon their opportunity.