Christianity

[Harry Baird]

It can't be both the case that the former (the morality of the acts/laws/principles/etc which are decreed/commanded/embodied/etc by God as moral) explains the latter (God's decreeing/commanding/embodying them as moral) as well as the case that the latter explains the former, because they're opposite explanations, so common sense dictates that it can't be the case that both are true.

That's like saying, "It can't be the case that a husband can be a father, because the fact that he's a husband makes it possible for him to be a father, and the fact that he's a father makes it possible for him to be a husband."

That's a failed analogy, for at least three reasons:

1. On the Dilemma, only one thing is predicated of God (that He embodies morality), not two things as in your supposed analogy (that a certain man is both a husband and a father).
2. The Dilemma thus has nothing to do with how one thing predicated of God makes another "possible" - as in your analogy where being a husband makes being a father possible (and/or vice versa) - because we are only predicating one thing of God.
3. The Dilemma is not based on God's being merely an instance of a moral agent, as in your analogy where this man is an instance of a husband and an instance of a father: it is based on his being the embodiment of morality itself. Thus, a successful analogy would be if this man was not merely a father, but the embodiment of paternity itself.

On this corrected analogy, we would be looking to explain paternity: what it is that grounds paternity as a concept. You would be claiming: paternity is grounded in this man's nature because this man embodies paternity.

The analogous question then would be:

Does (the assumed fact of) this man's embodying paternity explain the paternity of his embodiment, or does the paternity of his embodiment explain (the assumed fact of) this man embodying paternity?

That might sound a little convoluted, but it's just the framing in terms of "explanatory priority" of the simpler and more understandable question:

Does whatever this man's nature happens to be determine the standard of paternity, or does this man's nature embody paternity because it conforms to the standard of paternity?

If it's the former, then paternity is arbitrary: it is whatever this man's nature happens to be. Necessarily, arbitrariness is ungroundedness.

If it's the latter, then this man's nature doesn't ground paternity: that external standard (whatever it is) does.

Even granting that this man embodies paternity, then, does not ground paternity in him.

In other words, it does not explain the essence of paternity; it does not tell us how we (can/could) know what paternity is.

Likewise for the supposed grounding of morality by God's embodying it, even if we grant that God does embody morality.

The nature of God is the location of what we human beings understand, in our naive way, as "moral."
[...]
"The moral" and "God's character" are synonyms for precisely the same property.
[...]
"Good" and "what God is" are the same thing.

In context, all of those are simply different ways of saying that "God embodies morality", which I've shown above is insufficient to ground morality in Him.

From your perspective, this is obviously A Very Big Deal, because one of your favourite apologetic arguments is the argument from objective morality: that without God, there is no objective morality. That argument fails, of course, if objective morality is not grounded in God - and the Euthyphro Dilemma shows exactly that.

[Gary Childress]

"I'm a little apprehensive regarding the part about talking to God, but I'll see if it works."

with Harris, Sam i note how even if god did answer your prayers, millions more would go unanswered as mothers pray that their children survive some terrible disaster or starvation... and yet the christian seems not to even consider this, concerned only with his own acne problem (think that's the examplw he used lol). that fact is not only offensively narcissistic, but down right obscene. not targeting u G but u see what i mean. like i hear discussions between black women in line at hardees in the morning praising god becuz one of em got the apartment, etc. and they're just jumpin up and down hallelujah, completely obviously to the number of children who had starved to death over in africa somewhere by the time them pancakes got done.

of course this behavior is dismissed becuz these aren't philosophers, but u r, Gary. u r.

U should be beaten unmercifully with a stack of Camus essays for saying that.

That's a valid point. I mean, there are people in much worse shape than I am, just praying for the basics of survival (for example). If God hasn't answered them, then how can I expect him to answer my prayer to help me with mental illness? That's been a point that's nagged at me all along. There's so much suffering in this world, that one man's existential anguish is really irrelevant. Until there is no suffering in the world, it doesn't matter how much any single one of us suffers. How can people suffer so much and God seems to pay no attention?

[promethean75]

lol holy shit gary go to 4:50ish.

https://youtu.be/QuPsxFklxaw

alright recall that last reply to u in which i noted with Harris, Sam that thing about the seeming self centerdness of christian optimism and how when their prayers are answered they so easily forget about all the other insufferable horror in the world? that bit about how somebody gets a job and god is good... but when a hundred thousand people die in a volcano, god's merely mysterious.

lol that's the spot... but then i shit u not he says 'that's like playing tennis without the net'.

and who posted a selfie here of himself on a tennis court with a racket?

what we have here gary is a genuine jungian synchronicity connecting u, me and Harris, Sam into a single trans-euclidean non-hypodynamic arrow of time mereologically linked by a B5 brane curvature in space/time. I don't know how else this could have happened or what else would explain it.

he said that ten years ago so the chain of events, our fate together as the new three horsemen, wuz set in motion long before any of this.

what r the chances of me accidentally finding and bringing to your attention the fact that Harris, Sam uses the analogy of playing tennis without a net in an excerpt I happen to use in a critique of a guy who plays tennis who happened to demonstrate the very thing Harris, Sam wuz talking about?

do u have any idea how high the chances were that this did NOT happen as it has happened, Gary?

I think we just had a bonifide transcendental experience u and me. 

[Harry Baird]

In other words, it does not explain the essence of paternity; it does not tell us how we (can/could) know what paternity is.

Likewise for the supposed grounding of morality by God's embodying it, even if we grant that God does embody morality.

This relates well to something that Gary wrote earlier:

It's also not HELPFUL. If I want to know whether or not a possible action is right or wrong and the answer to that cannot be conclusively found directly in the Bible, then I need to know the essence of what makes for something being right or wrong in order to determine what is the right action to take. If I cannot answer that question without deference to God's word, then I basically CANNOT determine for myself what is right and what is wrong. I would need to ask God directly.

Right. If the truth of the proposition "God embodies morality" adequately grounded morality, then it would explain the essence of morality; it would tell us how we (can/could) know what morality is, and once you know the essence of a concept - what it really is - then you can determine for yourself whether or not any given instance conforms to it.

For example, when we know that the essence of "lying" is deliberately saying untrue things with the intent of having others believe they are true, then we can judge for ourselves that, when Auntie Bettie told us that she saw Cousin Edward, whom she hates, stealing from the shop, and we'd been with Cousin Edward at the time so we know that he *couldn't have* stolen from the shop, she is lying.

Conversely, "God embodies morality" gives us no way of assessing whether "Thou shalt not kill" is a moral precept. We know that it is, but we don't know that because "God embodies morality". "God embodies morality" gives us exactly zero basis on which to decide either way regarding that precept - or any other.

[Immanuel Can]

In other words, it does not explain the essence of paternity; it does not tell us how we (can/could) know what paternity is.

Likewise for the supposed grounding of morality by God's embodying it, even if we grant that God does embody morality.

No, that objection isn't a serious one. And why? Because of the very reason you adduce yourself: that God is claimed to be both the origin point of morality and its most perfect practitioner, in that He is the "embodiment" of the very concept.

It's like saying, "God is the most Godly entity in the universe." We're saying, "The Author of Morality is also its highest Perfection." So where's the dilemma?

So Euthyphro's dilemma tries to force a distinction where none can be made. And I disproved your claim that Socrates didn't say that, by direct quotation from the text itself, which clearly says the same thing. And you didn't care, and just railed on. There's not a lot one can do with such a disposition.

But Socrates knew what you do not: that the dilemma only becomes a dilemma if one posits polytheism. Only if there are multiple "gods," each committed to a different kind of moral or value stance, is the case for a division between "good" and "what [the] god is" possible.

It was precisely on that basis that Socrates, in dialogue with Euthyphro, himself made the case.

Go and look. Read the dialogue. You'll see I'm right.

[Harry Baird]

So where's the dilemma?

In the very carefully written bulk of my post that you snipped and utterly ignored, you intellectual charlatan.

So Euthyphro's dilemma tries to force a distinction where none can be made. And I disproved your claim that Socrates didn't say that, by direct quotation from the text itself, which clearly says the same thing.

I literally have no idea what "claim" of mine and what "saying" of Socrates you're referring to there.

The distinction made by the Euthyphro Dilemma is, though, very real, as laid out in painstaking detail in my post, and even better explained in the video which you're too scared to watch (sound familiar?).

the dilemma only becomes a dilemma if one posits polytheism.

[...]

It was precisely on that basis that Socrates, in dialogue with Euthyphro, himself made the case.

You're simply wrong here. The Dilemma translates perfectly well over to monotheism, because Socrates and Euthyphro ended up deciding for the purposes of continuing their dialogue that the good/virtuous/pious/etc is that which all the gods agree is good/virtuous/pious/etc.

It makes no essential difference to the Dilemma whether it is based on that which all the gods agree upon or that which a singular God decrees/wills/embodies/etc. It is thus not based upon disagreements among the gods as you have mistakenly claimed in the past and apparently continue to claim. The difficulty of polytheistic disagreements gets cleared up in the dialogue before the Dilemma itself is raised.

[Immanuel Can]

I literally have no idea what "claim" of mine and what "saying" of Socrates you're referring to there.

Ah. I see.

Well, then, it's evident you haven't read the dialogue. You only read somebody's naive summary of it, and you believed it.

I might have known. Well, go and read it for yourself. Socrates is on my side, not yours. You'll find out.

[Harry Baird]

Adding a little note on top of my previous post:

We're saying, "The Author of Morality is also its highest Perfection." So where's the dilemma?

The concepts of "authorship" and "perfection" that you've newly introduced in that quote don't escape the Dilemma any more than does the concept of "embodiment". They slip in just fine to the existing Dilemma:

Does the morality of the acts/laws/principles/etc which are decreed/commanded/embodied/authored/perfected/etc by God as moral explain why God decrees/commands/embodies/authors/perfects/etc them as moral, or does God's decreeing/commanding/embodying/authoring/perfecting/etc those acts/laws/principles/etc as moral explain their morality?

On either horn, objective morality isn't grounded in God (see the video + my earlier post as to why).

And now addressing your latest:

I literally have no idea what "claim" of mine and what "saying" of Socrates you're referring to there.

Ah. I see.

Well, then, it's evident you haven't read the dialogue.

No, fool. I've read the dialogue. The reason I have literally no idea what you're referring to is due to the vagueness and lack of clarity of your writing, and its apparent disconnection from everything in our exchange that came before it. If you can clear up what you mean, I might be able to respond more topically.

Socrates is on my side, not yours.

You're delusional.

[Gary Childress]

It's like saying, "God is the most Godly entity in the universe." We're saying, "The Author of Morality is also its highest Perfection." So where's the dilemma?

This is where you've lost me. I can't see where a God who allegedly drowned all but a handful of people in the world or told the Israelites to commit genocide is the "highest perfection" of morality or whatever. Now if you want to say that Christ is the highest perfection of morality or something and that Christ is maybe part of the Holy Trinity of a God other than Yahweh (the Hebrew tribal God), then that sounds plausible to me (based on what I've heard of Jesus). Or maybe the Bible isn't a true testimony from the one true God "Yahweh" or whatever? Maybe Yahweh is the true God but the Bible isn't his true word or deeds (God didn't cause the flood and didn't order the Israelites to commit genocide) and maybe Jesus came from the one true God. Otherwise, there's a part of me that is having a difficult time reconciling some of the actions of the Biblical God with being of the "highest moral perfection".

[BigMike]

It's like saying, "God is the most Godly entity in the universe." We're saying, "The Author of Morality is also its highest Perfection." So where's the dilemma?

This is where you've lost me. I can't see where a God who allegedly drowned all but a handful of people in the world or told the Israelites to commit genocide is the "highest perfection" of morality or whatever. Now if you want to say that Christ is the highest perfection of morality or something and that Christ is maybe part of the Holy Trinity of a God other than Yahweh (the Hebrew tribal God), then that sounds plausible to me (based on what I've heard of Jesus). Or maybe the Bible isn't a true testimony from the one true God "Yahweh" or whatever? Maybe Yahweh is the true God but the Bible isn't his true word or deeds (God didn't cause the flood and didn't order the Israelites to commit genocide) and maybe Jesus came from the one true God. Otherwise, there's a part of me that is having a difficult time reconciling some of the actions of the Biblical God with being of the "highest moral perfection".

Okay, so let me get this straight - we're supposed to believe in a God who flooded the whole world and told people to commit genocide, but also represents the highest moral perfection? Hilarious! Maybe we should also believe in unicorns and dragons while we're at it! I mean, come on, it's hard enough to get a group of people to agree on what toppings to put on a pizza, let alone on what an all-powerful deity wants us to do. Maybe we should just focus on being kind to each other and not worry about pleasing some invisible sky wizard. Or, hey, if we really need a higher power to guide us, how about we just follow Beyoncé? At least she can sing and dance.

[commonsense]

I'd say the same thing I'd say to anyone. It's not spooky. It's just an honest conversation that's necessary. The whole thing is to open the conversation.

Conversation between you and me or between God and me?

Between you and God.

I already said that God doesn’t talk to me. I can’t put forth a monologue and pretend it’s a discussion. That doesn’t make any sense.

[Immanuel Can]

Does the morality of the acts/laws/principles/etc which are decreed/commanded/embodied/authored/perfected/etc by God as moral explain why God decrees/commands/embodies/authors/perfects/etc them as moral, or does God's decreeing/commanding/embodying/authoring/perfecting/etc those acts/laws/principles/etc as moral explain their morality?

Oh, the answer's so straightforward. It's "yes."

God's commandments are moral because they come from God, and because God's the highest moral entity. These two things aren't an either-or, or a dichotomy. There are no "horns."

Socrates knew that. I know that. Why you don't see that, I cannot say.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It is no small matter that a World War was started in large part by people whose motivations were at the very deep, dark pit-bottom of that list. The possibility of evil resulting from the worse motivations then is no mere slippery-slope fallacy: we have slipped down that slope before, in a way the worse than which it is hard to imagine. It is quite right and proper then - and not at all frightfully outrageous and objectionable as AJ made it out to be - to press a person arguing for demographic dominance to clarify exactly what their motivations are, and how those motivations will play out in practice.

This is a problematic statement. First, the issue of *who started the war* is fraught. When one examines the full history in depth the problem becomes far more complex than the typical "the Nazis started it". And so it goes today: Who *started* the war in Ukraine? Who is benefiting from the war that has started?

Without going into details I start from this assertion: States and Nations behave in accord with Machiavellian rules. So, with this framework in mind, the analysis of politics and geo-politics becomes far easier.

It is quite right and proper then - and not at all frightfully outrageous and objectionable as AJ made it out to be - to press a person arguing for demographic dominance to clarify exactly what their motivations are, and how those motivations will play out in practice.

I think the way to approach the issue is to examine what happens when all *rights* to define a nation or a people as being made up of specific people with specific traits -- i.e. what we normally define as 'race' and 'ethnicity' -- is erased and made immoral. One has to examine the political powers that design that sort of culture and ask 'quo bono?' (Who benefits?) And the place to begin such an examination is, in my view, post-Sixties America. So -- and I am genuinely sorry if this makes people uncomfortable -- one also has to examine those who took an intellectual stand against this aspect of the Sixties movement. I have read The Displaced Majority (Wilmot Roberson) -- a book that was pulled from libraries and is now considered *ideologically off-limits* -- and I accept the soundness of his arguments. His arguments, and his general position, is far more in accord with the thinking and attitude of the Founders of the nation, and in this sense the man is a patriot. Except that the entire definition of patriot and patriotism has been transformed and transvalued. Therefore, one needs to step out of the present mind-set and understand how propaganda, PR (advertising and social engineering) brought this about. Yes, it is true that to do that means *standing outside of the reigning moral attitudes that dominate the present' -- that itself is a seditious endeavor! -- and reground oneself within different ideological predicates. Iambiguous has denigrated this is hauling oneself around on intellectual skyhooks (a tactic he uses to shut down thought and therefore quite in harmony with pseudo-moral social engineering) but in my view it is in the realm of thought -- the intellectual -- that one must always begin.

What does this mean for me personally? Since I am not an activist, and since I am not a social organizer, my own endeavor is only 'understanding'. If the question is then "What value has understanding if you cannot change the world and if you will not become an activist?", I can only say that I have at times questioned the utility of months and years of study (my own) when, as it happens, the direction of the world and global culture is thoroughly beyond any power I have to affect it.

When the dust settled after WWll it became, for some, necessary to research the 'root causes' of the conflict. Then, the value of the sober and serious historian was seen and appreciated. But *no-one* (meaning few) can take a historical attitude when the present is seen and examined. So what I see is a global ideological world taking shape and one that is corporacratic. And one aspect of the world that they seek to create involves erasure of divisions between people-consumers. And as I said I trace the roots of this to the Sixties era though the ideological roots extend further back.

The possibility of evil resulting from the worse motivations then is no mere slippery-slope fallacy.

I use a similar sort of analysis to examine the trends that predominate in our present.

[*] Racial and cultural diversity is very important (as a good in and of itself), and, in order to maintain this diversity, all races and cultures should continue to predominate in the countries in which they currently predominate, so as to avoid via intermixing the descent of some/many/all races and cultures into indistinguishable homogeneities, especially as multinational corporate forces spread their bland sameness throughout the globe.

The term 'racial diversity' is terribly Orwellian when examined carefully. If *racial diversity* is valued then, in fact, racial division must be defined as a value. Racial diversity mean, in the end, racial blending and therefore the destruction of racial specificity.

We are surrounded, in so many areas, by Orwellian constructs of this sort. For that reason sifting through them becomes important. It is actually a spiritual effort. Because to become *disentangled* and *free* of false constructs and ideology -- is this not so? -- is supposed to bring one to 'freedom'.

Finally, it would be my advice to have avoided the demographic transformation of the United States which is now substantially in-process. How could that have been done? How was it done in the past? It was done in the past through having and holding to strong definitions. Allowing them, believing in them, applying them.

But once the process has begun, and substantially begun, there is really no way to reverse it or turn back the tide. To contemplate that is impossible. So in my own view when examining, say, the United States there is nothing that can be done. You have to accept what had been done. And make the best of it.

However, the United States also seems to be heading for open civil conflict. Now, why is that? What happened that transformed the country to the degree that it begins to fall asunder? When those questions are asked, I submit, one has to turn back to a historical analysis and perspective.

This is one reason I have suggested understanding and appreciating the social movement in France (and in other places) where there is resistance to excessive immigration. One can only wish at this point to *preserve* those nations and cultures that are homogenous (if one decides that homogeneity is a value-in-itself). That is why I have referred to Renaud Camus. He corresponds then to a far more eloquent and cultured version of Wilmot Robertson.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Your every reply is a reminder of what a waste of time it is to engage with you.

For once, we are completely on the same page.

So bye.

Here is what it comes down to: You (I mean 'one' or 'anyone') cannot realistically ask Immanuel to examine the tenets of a belief-system to which he is committed at the level of 'metaphysical fibre'.

Here on these pages he has staked out his position: the tried-and-true Christian believer who will define the core tenets against all comers. Do you expect to gain an inroad? Do you imagine you'll bring forward some 'new idea' that will successfully challenge the position to which he is wedded?

No. It will never happen. It can't happen by definition!

So, the only thing that one can do is to work out one's own stance relationally to Immanuel Can. It therefore becomes like how Iambiguous handles it with his 'Note to the others'.

One does not talk, nor reason, with Immanuel Can. He is a bone fide old-school died-in-the-wool Christian believer and Christian literalist (religious fanatic is how I put it). Once this is seen everything then becomes far easier.

Is such a 'belief-system' an advantage or a disadvantage for people today? Now that is the question. Adamantine systems of belief have their benefit (as well, obviously, their deficits). All *we* can do is to ponder and weigh the benefits against the deficits. We who do not and cannot believe like he does suffer as a result. But then we also gain advantages that he can't.

How can we better define these?

On another level Immanuel Can is a sort of 'mirror' of traits and tendencies that we have and which (sometimes) we cannot see.

[Alexis Jacobi]

If no such exchange ever actually happened and the purpose of the story is to raise awareness of the difference between devotion to God and using one's own best judgment, then I think that would undermine the position of the majority of Christain sects in existence, if not all of them. I mean, is there any Christian sect that doesn't take the Bible as a guide to living? Is the unifying theme of the Bible not to devote oneself to God and everything God commands, rather than to ruminate on theological puzzles? I mean, if they're theological puzzles, then there is nothing to guide one's life by because the puzzles raise more questions than they answer if one does NOT take God's word as the central underlying message of the Bible. I sort of wonder if that isn't something that separates theology from mythology. Does any Christian sect in this world truly look at the Bible as myth? I've heard some claim that the Bible can be read allegorically in SOME places. But I don't think I've ever heard any Christian theologist claim that the entire Bible is a book of puzzles and thought experiments.

If you are -- as perhaps you might be (though in fact you are not) -- really interested in this issue you'll have to make a more concerted effort to understand Hebrew and Jewish cultural and religious forms.

There are two poles in this: One that is unquestionably admiring and the other that is, perhaps, unquestionably critical. The critical one will involve you in the examination of ideas (constructs) that will make you very uncomfortable because at the same time they are critical of a peculiar type of will that operates within the Jewish mind and is expressed, as it were, in "Jewish being". The roots of antisemitism are to be located in this critical endeavor.

The deconstruction of Christianity is also a deconstruction of Hebrew and Judaic *thought* in the sense of a specific *will* that operates there. [I present you with Mr Immanuel Can as Exhibit No 1!]

My suggestion? That you back away from the critical endeavor. You are not in any sense up to it. Why? Because to deconstruct it at that level will necessarily involve a larger deconstruction of ways of being, ways of seeing, ways of feeling and ways of believing that have been installed in you at a level that you cannot see nor understand.

Christianity is applied Judaism.

Now, there is another aspect here and that is that the Germanic tribes (I refer to *Europe*) that did receive Christianity, modified it. And what that modification consisted of is both very interesting and also important. Briefly, they turned an other-worldly religious modality into one geared toward this-world existence. This is dealt on in James C. Russell's The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity : A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation.

These are difficult and fraught areas of research. You have demonstrated (this is just my opinion) a sort of fear or resistance to go too far into the ramifications of certain ideas (I gathered this from your total refusal to consider the intellectual basis of Renaud Camus' position which gave you intellectual heebie-jeebies). So I doubt that you can really carry ideas through to their conclusive points. But I say this because, in fact, most people can't and also won't. This is also a question of the will.