is the Christian concept of the One from a philosophical point of view true?

[Gary Childress]

If that was your experience, then don't think it was typical. There is an abundance of anecdotal evidence to the contrary. Perhaps you were in a particularly reasonable corner of things...or perhaps it is as I suggested, that you never really had reason to know what was going on, since you were not the target of any ill-treatment yourself. Either way, there's no doubt there's a great deal of antipathy to treating any alternate theory to Evolutionism with anything more than a dismissive attitude, if not also outright hostility.

There is no "ACCEPTANCE" of "alternative theories".

There you go. That's what I was pointing out to you.

We are not in accord--yet. "There you go" doesn't indicate to me that you understand what is different in our views.

[Immanuel Can]

And yet, you wanted to walk me into an explanation of the very thing you now admit you are powerless to explain?

"Sauce for the goose," Charlie. It looks like you can't stand up to your own demands.

I would not say that I am completely powerless...

I would. You don't seem to be able to explain anything. But you think you're owed an explanation for that which you are powerless to explain.

Well, my explanation involves at least a cause and effect which, if true, would be (at least theoretically, you'd have to concede) capable of the feat in question. You've got zippo.

That sounds like a whole lot of "powerlessness" to me.

And no, you don't get to invoke nameless "scientists" who's identities you do not give us, and in whom we are asked to trust blindly, just as you appear to do. That's not an argument: that's an unfounded appeal-to-authority, minus any real authority.

[Immanuel Can]

There is no "ACCEPTANCE" of "alternative theories".

There you go. That's what I was pointing out to you.

We are not in accord--yet. "There you go" doesn't indicate to me that you understand what is different in our views.

We have lots of differences. But at least you know now that alternate theories are not accepted. You were giving the impression that people have no problem when they question Evolutionism in the academy. But they are. And I think you know they are, by anecdote if not by personal experience.

[Immanuel Can]

What he says is plain enough, nothing profound or original; logic itself being nonessential to any argument he makes. It's the same crap theists spout over and over again...nothing new; same old, same old!

Didn't really understand it, then. Yup.

Then why don't you explain it?

Because anybody here should be smart enough to get it on their own, since all the words are straightforward and all the actual arguments plain...and such a person is not capable, they probably should find a hobby at which they have some skill. But my explanation is unlikely to be more accessible than his...which is to say, very accessible.

[Alexis Jacobi]

...

Well again, you are entitled to your opinion.

My view is that in every exchange you have, on these topics, on this forum, you routinely get slaughtered. You convince no one, you draw no one to your side.

It is true that you resort to a cause & effect narrative that neatly ties up the issue so that no more need be thought about it. I agree.

Talking with you is the most amazing dead-end. You are stuck in a loop from which you cannot escape.

However, I do not perceive my position as being an imprisoning loop. I do not know, and I do not think anyone really knows, how life originated in this Universe. But then they do not have any idea at all how the entire manifestation came to exist, either.

So in this sense, except in respect to particulars, they are in the dark. Yet they know they are in the dark.

I do not profess to have or to know the answers to these ultimate questions. But what I do say, in regard to yours, is that your answers are really not answers at all. It is really a simple declaration.

If I challenge you to offer up your explanation-system it is because I know you will recite from Genesis! And that is really no explanatory system at all. It is a mythology.

If this is so, I suggest, it leads to an unraveling of the entire System of Belief. And indeed this is what has happened.

More relevant to me, and in the context of this thread, is your attempts to reorient Janoah into the necessary beliefs that are the pillars of Hebrew cosmology. Again, if the pillars are unsettled the belief-system is in danger. The belief-system must be buttressed, in one way or another, or it is in danger of collapse.

And then what happens?

Your silly banter Immanuel is a footnote to a far larger conversation from which you are perennially locked out.

Therefore, like Iambiguous, what I write is for *the others*.

[Gary Childress]

There you go. That's what I was pointing out to you.

We are not in accord--yet. "There you go" doesn't indicate to me that you understand what is different in our views.

But at least you know now that alternate theories are not accepted.

No "theories' are accepted in the sense that they are immune from scrutiny based on evidence. And all known theories including "scientific creationism WERE discussed among us students under the facilitation of professors who did not judge so much as ask questions or pose counter examples to clarify and stimulate the thinking of us students. No one was "silenced" without evidence. Debate was encouraged. I can't speak for your experience in college but that wasxunarguably mine.

The fossil record is physical fact that can be examined by anyone with the inclination to do work in a way that is understood and explainable by anyone to everyone. You go dig in the ground with tools and piece together artifacts based on various constants and laws (or normalities) that we can also measure with instruments and mathematics.

"Go seek God", is not as precise and methodical as "dig here". The instructions are utterly non descript and vague. It's like a Zen master giving a bothersome apprentice a koan that makes no clear sense. Finally when the student becomes a master, he realizes how bothersome he was to his master when his apprentice asks him a question he cannot answer and the student/master relationship is recycled over and over again without actually solving the 'riddle' presented (such as what is the meaning of life or the sound of one hand clapping or a tree falling when no one is around to hear). The riddles are non-solvable. Universities and monasteries become little more than day care institutions for society's hopeless dreamers and romantics as the serfs plow the fields of their feudal masters who do little else than frolick and play at festivities. The plowers typically produce children who learn how to work, the masters produce children who more often go on to fill the universities and monasteries and hopefully don't have children themselves so as to require the expansion of builing more such places.

A thousand years from now the same thing will be happening except using different words and languages in which to label the same kinds of buildings from one epoch to the next.

Perhaps the most momentous problem worth solving is where to dispose of the bodies of the previous citizens so as to give survivors the sense that they need not be paralyzed by fear and dread the fate which unavoidably awaits them too.

And in all this we are supposed to reach to God for something called "salvation", perhaps the pre-pharmaceutical version of ant-depressants. And so the next generation of masters and students repeat the futile endeavor only to discover it's futility after a contemplative life of study and devotion. Born into a world by parents who made the same cruel mistake (conjured from the intoxication of passion) of their own parents.

[Immanuel Can]

Well again, you are entitled to your opinion.

Again...yes, I am.

But opinions are not all equal. Some are more grounded in the facts than others are. One fact is that you give evidence of being addicted to the ad hominem, and to posturing and rhetoric over substance. That's not so much an opinion as it is a summary of the facts, based on the evidence you've chosen to provide.

You could do better. And I think you should do better. But nobody can make you do better. So that's up to you. Just my opinion.

[Immanuel Can]

We are not in accord--yet. "There you go" doesn't indicate to me that you understand what is different in our views.

But at least you know now that alternate theories are not accepted.

No "theories' are accepted in the sense that they are immune from scrutiny based on evidence. And all known theories including "scientific creationism WERE discussed among us students under the facilitation of professors who did not judge so much as ask questions or pose counter examples to clarify and stimulate the thinking of us students. No one was "silenced" without evidence. Debate was encouraged. I can't speak for your experience in college but that wasxunarguably mine.

Well, apparently your personal experience doesn't generalize. A little anecdotal research would soon show you that others have had quite different experiences than you had in the immaculate halls of impartial academia in which your intellect percolated.

What school was that, by the way? I'm just curious to see what they actually teach there.

The fossil record is physical fact that can be examined by anyone with the inclination to do work in a way that is understood and explainable by anyone to everyone.

Really? And you've done that for yourself? And you've found no conflicts in the fossil record that would undermine the orthodoxies you've been taught?

Keep digging.

"Go seek God", is not as precise and methodical as "dig here".

It can be, actually. In both cases, one has to be willing to actually go and do it, though. Talking is not the same as having done.

[Gary Childress]

Well again, you are entitled to your opinion.

Again...yes, I am.

But opinions are not all equal. Some are more grounded in the facts than others are.

The final absurdity I ever have to face, I hope. Next up I'm lectured by Adolf Hitler on philosophical ethics. The comedy is unbearable. It's literally killing me inside.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Don’t die, Gary! Think of your mother.

Best resort to clean, clear, upfront sarcasm with tiny inflections of intellectual sadism.

[No charge for this wisdom BTW. May the benefits rain down!]

[Dubious]

Didn't really understand it, then. Yup.

Then why don't you explain it?

Because anybody here should be smart enough to get it on their own, since all the words are straightforward and all the actual arguments plain...

Precisely my point! Straightforward and plainly spoken the same old theistic detritus forever repeated ending with the usual Jesus chants. James Joyce depicted these old Irish farts and their blatant hypocrisy with disgust, especially so in his Stephen Hero novels.

There's nothing new theism can offer beyond a perpetual repeat of its distorted views no matter how much it tries to make itself compatible with science as we now have it making itself more incompatible as science advances while theism stagnates with the same incessant repeats.

[Immanuel Can]

There's nothing new theism can offer ...

Well, we'll see.

Either now, or later, you're going to lose on that contention. Maybe both.

[Alexis Jacobi]

There's nothing new theism can offer ...

Well, we'll see.

There's nothing new theism can offer beyond a perpetual repeat of its distorted views no matter how much it tries to make itself compatible with science as we now have it making itself even more incompatible as science progresses while theism stagnates with the same incessant repeats.

He is right in so many senses but what he can’t do (and no one can) is dismiss readily and flippantly the ethical attainments of Christian philosophy. I am nowhere near an blanketly dismissive of Christian attainments or value-definitions as Dubious, but there is nothing left in the Story to hang a hat on.

More than anyone I’ve encountered, IC, you destroy the possibility of belief. How proud you should feel!

[Immanuel Can]

More than anyone I’ve encountered, IC, you destroy the possibility of belief. How proud you should feel!

Maybe for you. But then, I'm not seeing anything in you to which the truth should appeal.

[Dubious]

There's nothing new theism can offer ...

Well, we'll see.

There certainly was nothing new in the Lennox lectures that wasn't already understood and acknowledged by theists generations ago. Can you point out a single thing that was original and I don't mean the silly metaphors?