Philosophy Now Forum

u: and what about the six million year old earth theory man? what is that? did u not know we would develop carbon dating technology that would disprove all that in a few thousand years? like what wuz that, a joke? And what about all the human ancestors that have existed? U plant a bunch of fake bones in the ground to be a smart ass?

god: lol yeah I thought about that but I'm mysterious and so forth. but yeah i wuz like damn what if they find out this thing took me longer than six days and start doubting the credibility of the bible as a source of true and accurate information of any sort becuz of this?

u: yeah see what I'm sayin? hey u wanna smoke a blunt?

god: nah I'm good.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 11:09 am IAM quotes AJ:

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 4:44 am "And then I like voyaging by intellectual skyhooks from one upper region to another."

It seems that I must clarify what seemed obvious to me. OK, here it goes:

It was an ironic statement.

irony
/ˈʌɪrəni/
noun
the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.

It could be that your world just shattered into bits (fragments). If so I am sorry and it wasn’t intentional.

Nope, I'm not buying that. At all. Given that with me you "voyaged" over and again from one intellectual contraption cloud to the next, this really is how you prefer to explore God and religion.

So, I invite you again to bring your own didactic assessments "down to Earth" and examine them in regard to these...

1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious convictions
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious paths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious path

...matters. As they pertain to how you connect the dots existentially between the life that you have lived, the value judgments [moral and political prejudices] you have come to embody, the behaviors you choose and what you imagine your fate to be [re God and religion] beyond the grave.

That is really the only thing that interests me personally about Christianity. Can it or can it not be demonstrated to be the real deal? Can or cannot someone provide me with a demonstrable argument that might entice me to come back to it?

Because God knows I'd like to.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 6:07 pm So, I invite you again to bring your own didactic assessments "down to Earth" and examine them in regard to these...

AJ responds thusly

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 6:07 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 11:09 am IAM quotes AJ:

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 4:44 am "And then I like voyaging by intellectual skyhooks from one upper region to another."

It seems that I must clarify what seemed obvious to me. OK, here it goes:

It was an ironic statement.

irony
/ˈʌɪrəni/
noun
the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.

It could be that your world just shattered into bits (fragments). If so I am sorry and it wasn’t intentional.

Nope, I'm not buying that. At all. Given that with me you "voyaged" over and again from one intellectual contraption cloud to the next, this really is how you prefer to explore God and religion.

So, I invite you again to bring your own didactic assessments "down to Earth" and examine them in regard to these...

1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious convictions
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious paths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious path

...matters. As they pertain to how you connect the dots existentially between the life that you have lived, the value judgments [moral and political prejudices] you have come to embody, the behaviors you choose and what you imagine your fate to be [re God and religion] beyond the grave.

That is really the only thing that interests me personally about Christianity. Can it or can it not be demonstrated to be the real deal? Can or cannot someone provide me with a demonstrable argument that might entice me to come back to it?

Because God knows I'd like to.

Christianity can not only not be "demonstrated to be the real deal", it is a most self-serving system of belief. Why don't you become a follower of Jesus instead? In other words, follow the gospel preached by Him?

Perhaps the most prevalent theme in the gospel preached by Jesus is the importance of HIS words. Jesus went on and on about it. Emphasized the point time and again. Issued warning after warning. Yet Christians choose to follow the words of those other than Jesus. Precisely because it is so self-serving to do so.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 5:28 pm

I wonder, if we say that people are "evil by choice," but not "evil by nature," how do we explain that people ever make the choice to be evil? Having no nature conducive to it, should they not find evil, if not instinctively repugnant, at least unappealing to anything in their nature, unechoed by anything they actually want?

From where, then, comes any inclination to choose evil, if not from some harkening in the nature of the chooser?

Who on earth, I wonder, came up with this misleading and pointless concept of "evil"? Some people are destructive and ill intentioned towards others, but it's all explainable by psychology. We describe people as being good or bad, as a descruption of how they behave towards other people, and among them are those who are extremely bad. Why not call it a personality disorder, a character flaw, a mental aberation, or a psychological disorder; or even an occasional naturally occurring element of human nature. At least that would give us a clue as to where to look in addressing the problem when we come up against it. But evil; where the Hell is the root of that supposed to be? Thinking in terms of evil is unhelpful, and no less superstitious than believing that walking under a ladder is bad luck. It's primitive mumbo jumbo.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 4:55 am

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 4:18 am All I can do is to relate how I remember our exchange when he noted that his belief in the Christian God residing in Heaven was not just a leap of faith. I recall noting a comparison between demonstrating that God resides in Heaven and demonstrating that the Pope resides in the Vatican. Then I recall him asking me if I had ever been to the Vatican myself and personally seen the Pope there. Or something along those lines.

I guess I would be very hard pressed to prove the Pope resides in the Vatican. I can see how this annoyed you. And I get his point.

You do? Because you and I cannot personally prove the Pope resides in the Vatican, he might not? The whole Pope thing might be a manifestation of a sim world or a dream world or some Matrix reality? Not sure what you mean here. And what annoyed me was IC making the claim [as I understood it then] that demonstrating the Christian God resides in Heaven is really no different from demonstrating that the Pope resides in the Vatican. "Prove that", he seemed to be saying.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 4:55 amI suppose if I had a great deal of money I could probably tackle the pope issue, but this money would not help me with the God issue, as far as I know. I'd still need to, as a very rich person, join the religion, perform the practices, etc. With a lot of money I might be able to get some concrete evidence the Pope resides in the Vatican. Hire private detectives, bribe workers at the Vatican, perhaps somehow infiltrate the Vatican. They are quite different problems. Perhaps via underground tunnels the Pope comes in an out of the Vatican and really resides in another part of the city.

With IC, however, you don't really need much money at all.

If you can afford a Bible, read it. It tells you the Christian God resides in Heaven. And then IC will insist that proves He does precisely because the Bible is the word of God.

Or, for a few hundred dollars, buy a laptop computer like mine. Then you can click on IC's 16 YouTube videos. They will convince you. Start with the one on "meaning" as I did above.

And again with so much at stake in picking the right God here, how can he refuse to disclose the strongest evidence he has for His existence?

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 4:55 amWhat if that evidence is personal and not something one can show on the internet? Can you imagine being convinced of something that you cannot demonstrate to others?

Then why on Earth would he tell me to watch the videos if I wanted to be convinced as well that the Christian God resides in Heaven.

Basically, what I am interested in is his explanation for why they convinced him of it. What was the evidence the videos provided such that it was no longer necessary for him to take a leap of faith to God...but to know that his God does in fact exist.

As I noted to him, there are many, many, many One True Paths to immortality and salvation out there to choose from. And each denomination no doubt has their own arguments and evidence.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 4:55 amThough again I would stress that most religions are going to suggest participation as the route to belief, not arguments.

Okay, here's the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

Get started yourself. After all, with so much at stake here and there, shouldn't all of them be tested?

Please. How difficult is it for him to note a particular video [or two or three] that he construed provides the most persuasive proof that the Christian God resides in Heaven?

But, okay, if they are only a few minutes long each, let him post them one at a time. We can all watch them and discuss the evidence provided.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 4:55 amI'm not interested. But sure, it could go like that. But you could just start with one and see how it goes.

Someone insists that he has proof that the Christian God does in fact exist. And thus providing you with an objective morality on this side of the grave and immortality and salvation on the other side of it...and you're not interested?

Well, I certainly am. Whether it's Christianity or any other One True Path, if someone says they can actually convince me with evidence that objective morality, immortality and salvation are within my grasp, I sure as shit will peruse their strongest proof of it.

Maybe our circumstances are just different. That dasein stuff.

No, really, if anyone else here had such evidence regarding the existence of a God they believed could be demonstrated to exist beyond a mere leap of faith, wouldn't they be extremely eager to bring it to the attention of others? A transcending font one could anchor one's moral convictions to here and now and be assured of immortality and salvation for their very soul there and then?

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 11:31 pmWell, again, most religious leaders would suggest participation in the religion and it's practices. Not some data or argument or even a video. That it's not some thoughts in the head but a process of relationship or a process of change in yourself through which one comes to the belief (or not).

Come on. Given all of the different One True Paths out there...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 4:55 amOne, you're assuming that there is one right answer and not all religions do that. Two, you keep saying the issue is of utmost importance. Well, choose by number of adherants, choose randomly. Read shorthand discriptions and choose the ones that sound best, most logical, most appealing. What do you have to lose? I mean, you might have something - it would take time away from other things.

Well, if there really is "a God, the God" and "a denomination, the denomination" that does embody the one right answer, who wouldn't want to come across it?

And yes, I could go down the list of all those who do insist that their path is the One True Path and do all those things you recommend. It would only involve hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours on my part.

But, instead, I invite those who do make a claim for objective morality and immortality and salvation to note for me any substantive/substantial evidence they have for why it is their own path I should choose.

IC is attempting that.

Let's see how it all unfolds. I've already reacted to one of his videos. He recoomended it to Gary above. Did you watch it?

So, let him recommend another.

...how do you know which one it really is until one by one you participate with them in the religion?

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 4:55 amThat question cuts both ways.

Not sure what you mean by this. They are embracing the One True Path to objective morality, immortality and salvation. How could you be sure which one it is unless you tried them all? Or at least all those who do make that claim.

No, it makes much more sense that those on a particular spiritual path provide us with what they deem to be the most compelling reason

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 4:55 amI don't think that makes any sense at all. You're treating it like a science survey. It seems clear that belief in this area has to do with much that cannot possibly be passed to others as evidence. There are mundane examples of such issues.

No, I'm pointing out that "here and now" I am "fractured and fragmented" morally and that when I die this = oblivion. Though, sure, if someone's religious conviction revolves around a "leap of faith" such that they acknowledge that they have no evidence, fine, I can respect that as long as they don't insist that others must share their own faith. But IC and others go beyond faith. They claim their God does in fact exist and they can prove it. And some of them become the equivalent of theocrats hell-bent on either converting the infidels or destroying them.

Do you want to be "left behind" when Christ returns?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 5:28 pm Harry:

Alright if I offer a thought?

Sure.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 5:28 pm I wonder, if we say that people are "evil by choice," but not "evil by nature," how do we explain that people ever make the choice to be evil? Having no nature conducive to it, should they not find evil, if not instinctively repugnant, at least unappealing to anything in their nature, unechoed by anything they actually want?

From where, then, comes any inclination to choose evil, if not from some harkening in the nature of the chooser?

They're good questions. I can't say I have good enough answers to make it worth offering any. All that it seems worth affirming (again) is that my outlook is dualistic, premised on the existence of both metaphysical good and metaphysical evil. How those poles came to exist is above my pay grade; that they exist just seems to me to be the most plausible inference given my own experience and understanding.

Please feel free to offer your own answers if you care to.

Harbal wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 7:00 pm Who on earth, I wonder, came up with this misleading and pointless concept of "evil"?

"Pointless"? Hmmm....

Well, in order to insist that such a concept was "pointless" you'd have to believe that such a word failed to apply to, say rape, pedophilia, genocide, infanticide, murder, and so on; and with that word, you'd have to banish all the synonyms for it, such as "bad," "wrong," "nasty," "unhealthy," "antisocial," "impractical," and so on...because otherwise, the concept "evil" would simply be taking a different name and continuing as it was.

How committed are you to banishing all negative value judgments from our lexicon? And if you get them all out, does that mean that evil itself disappears, or that it goes on...but this time, as a nameless and incomprehensible property in response to which we have not even a word to identify it?

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 7:33 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 5:28 pm Harry:

Alright if I offer a thought?

Sure.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 5:28 pm I wonder, if we say that people are "evil by choice," but not "evil by nature," how do we explain that people ever make the choice to be evil? Having no nature conducive to it, should they not find evil, if not instinctively repugnant, at least unappealing to anything in their nature, unechoed by anything they actually want?

From where, then, comes any inclination to choose evil, if not from some harkening in the nature of the chooser?

They're good questions. I can't say I have good enough answers to make it worth offering any. All that it seems worth affirming (again) is that my outlook is dualistic, premised on the existence of both metaphysical good and metaphysical evil. How those poles came to exist is above my pay grade; that they exist just seems to me to be the most plausible inference given my own experience and understanding.

Please feel free to offer your own answers if you care to.

Well, my suggestion would be that evil being a "choice" and evil being a "nature" are not mutually exclusive.

Rationally speaking, it's quite easy to see how it could be both at the same time, as in a situation in which, say, a criminal is selecting a time, a place and a victim for his crime. He's definitely choosing: we can see that because he selects time, place and victim, setting aside other possibilities and planning his crime. So it's a choice. But it's the simmering criminal inclination in his brain that's impelling him toward the action he's about to take. Most people don't commit his crime, plausibly; but he does. Why him? Because he has the nature of one who desires to do such things.

So it would be a false dichotomy if we were to suppose that evil has to be either a choice or a nature. However, if we say it's just a choice, then we're quite at a loss to explain why the criminal was attracted to his crime, rather than the choice of not committing any crime -- which to us, as perhaps non-criminally-minded types, seems the preferable choice.

If that's right, it's not wrong to say the criminal chooses his crime. It's also not wrong to say he chooses crime because he's a criminal. Both are parts of the whole equation. Who I am and what I choose to do are not easily separable except, perhaps, in a heuristic exercise.

That would be my suggestion.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 7:53 pm [Contents snipped for brevity --HB]

That would be my suggestion.

An interesting take. Thanks for your thoughts.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 7:38 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 7:00 pm Who on earth, I wonder, came up with this misleading and pointless concept of "evil"?

"Pointless"? Hmmm....

Well, in order to insist that such a concept was "pointless" you'd have to believe that such a word failed to apply to, say rape, pedophilia, genocide, infanticide, murder, and so on;

Well of course I believe the word "evil" fails to apply to those things; I don't believe the word applies to anything. I explained that quite clearly, and I'm sure you know I did, even though you don't agree with me.

and with that word, you'd have to banish all the synonyms for it, such as "bad," "wrong," "nasty," "unhealthy," "antisocial," "impractical," and so on..

Those are not synonyms for the word "evil". It's more the case that people like you use the word, evil, as a synonym for all those other words. When you substitute the word, evil, for any of those words, it implies they have an extra dimension to them beyond the mundane. And that is where the superstitious nonsense comes in.

How committed are you to banishing all negative value judgments from our lexicon?

When a word is both useless and misleading, that is when I would start to consider that we might be better off without it.

And if you get them all out, does that mean that evil itself disappears, or that it goes on.

Hopefully, it would mean that any misguided belief in this mythical presence you call evil disappears.

Harbal wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 8:23 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 7:38 pm and with that word, you'd have to banish all the synonyms for it, such as "bad," "wrong," "nasty," "unhealthy," "antisocial," "impractical," and so on..

Those are not synonyms for the word "evil".

All are words that serve the same concept. Some are more pejorative than others...but they're all ways of saying, "This thing is bad."

And by banishing the word "evil," you change nothing. All the phenomena to which it has formerly been applied continue: except now your stock of terms to describe them adequately may be impoverished. For example, is it enough to say that "pedophilia is unhelpful"? Or that "murder is antisocial?" Are those not palid, wimpy ways of trying to express a level of badness that's far better captured by a word like "evil"?

"Genocide is nasty": does that seem a reasonable description to you?

I haven't read AJ's post yet. But let's see if what he notes in his usual "wall of words" has anything at all to do with this:

So, I invite you again to bring your own didactic assessments "down to Earth" and examine them in regard to these...

1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious convictions
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious paths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious path

...matters. As they pertain to how you connect the dots existentially between the life that you have lived, the value judgments [moral and political prejudices] you have come to embody, the behaviors you choose and what you imagine your fate to be [re God and religion] beyond the grave.

That is really the only thing that interests me personally about Christianity. Can it or can it not be demonstrated to be the real deal? Can or cannot someone provide me with a demonstrable argument that might entice me to come back to it?

Because God knows I'd like to.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 1:56 pmA quote from Acts that caught my eye: “These who have turned the world upside down have come here too."

And this has what to do with anything?

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 5:17 amShe sums it all up: "If Christianity is true then each one of us is here for a reason. And life does not end at the grave. And God is the absolute standard of goodness. He knows you. He loves you. He intentionally created you. So, your life ultimately does have meaning and value and purpose."

The appeal will always have a great deal of attraction and power. It becomes apparent when one reverses the assertions:

You exist but there is no purpose to your existence.

Though you sense that your being is eternal it is not. Eventually you will be subsumed into meaningless nothingness.

There is no "good" in this manifest universe and no 'absolute good' that can be associated with the manifest cosmos.

There is no divine intelligence that is aware of you. You are an irrelevant particle. You have no connection with something greater.

Our own *love* is not connected to larger, cosmic processes or realities. If you imagine a creator who has ultimate concern for you, you are hallucinating it. Your belief that you are connected, through love, to divine being is a sickness. Do away with it and become well.

Yep, that's how it might all be in a No God world.

What, you don't want to believe that? You want to be comforted and consoled instead by merely believing in a "leap of faith" or through a "wager" that a God, the God, their Christian God is "up there" anchoring you to His objective morality and to His immortality and salvation?

No problem. Just read the Christian Bible. That proves the Christian God exists. Why? Because it says that He does in the Christian Bible! You don't have to be a fucking genius to grasp the logic of that!!

As for all these folks...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

...you don't want to be "left behind" with them when their Savior returns, do you? You want to ascend to Paradise. And you will. Well, providing you're of pure white Northern European descent of course.

And if you're not?

Satyr -- AJ? -- has something for you to peruse: https://www.jollyheretic.com/p/eugenics ... ace-theory

Charles Dutton: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Edward_Dutton

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 1:56 pm Since you simply *happened to occur*, and since you actually realize that you face a wall of sheer meaninglessness, all sense of purpose and of design is also hallucinatory. If you believe life has 'purpose', no, it does not. Better to stifle or even to strangle that false sense.

Typical objectivist bullshit of course. No one is talking about "sheer meaninglessness", or of all sense of purpose and design being "hallucinatory". Only that down through the ages historically and across the globe culturally and in terms of our individual experiences personally, meaning and purpose have become anchored existentially in any number of conflicting moral narratives and political agendas:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

And then those like AJ who are actually naive enough to insist that only their own really does reflect the One True Path. Come on, what could possibly be more ridiculous given human history to date?!!

So, straight up into the clouds he goes where everything revolves around "ideas":

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 1:56 pm Since I cannot present myself and don't present myself as a Christian apologist attempting to convert anyone, I find it more interesting, more fruitful, to examine the implications of the ideas we have. Obviously, we have all been confronted with a powerful idea-set that affirms in reverse each of the positive assertions made by the Christian woman (and naturally by both Judaism and Christianity).

That belief, that interpretation, is made to appear *absolute* is it not? It is a sort of final and irreducible declaration about the way things really are. And yet when it is examined it is rendered thoroughly false! Allow me to explain. I might say, and in fact I do say, that the sense of purpose, value, continuity, relevance, meaning and indeed all the rest that I might name, most surely do exist and are as real as anything else. They exist and are part of the structure of things. They exist *metaphysically* of course. But does that mean falsely or, as I understand many to mean, as a neurotic hallucination?

Go ahead, I challenge you. Please attempt to relate any of this to the life that you actually live as it pertains to your value judgments, your behaviors and your spiritual speculations regarding immortality and salvation.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 1:56 pmAlso in Acts, as most everyone is aware, when Paul made his appeal in Athens:

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

And that has what to do with objective morality, immortality and salvation?!!

The whole point of religion.

Then just more or the same pompous and ponderous "flitting about from cloud to cloud"...

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 1:56 pmChristians make the problematic claim that the God defined by Judaism and Judaic monotheism is also the God that created all things. Let's be honest: that is a hard assertion to make. I think I can with fairness reduce both Iambiguous's and Gary's *core problem* to the fact that neither of them can reconcile The World with this proposed World Creator, there is simply far too much dissonance in the assertion. Indeed the assertion is made to seem childish.

So even if we could arrive, or have arrived, at the (necessary) assertion that the The World and the manifest cosmos could not have come about except through an immense act of manifest design, we are not able to understand what *God* is through examination of that world. All there are really are endless questions. The more that our seeing penetrates the depth (of the Universe) (for example through the new telescope which seems to be upending physics) the more are specific interpretations overturned. We then seem to be confronted with the understanding, which is more than mere sense, that our interpretations are not very solid.

Tell me this couldn't have been written by Alan Sokal!! Or AGE?

The rest you can read yourself.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 1:56 pm

As T. E. Hulme and others have pointed out, it is almost insuperably difficult to become critically conscious of one's own habitual assumptions; 'doctrines felt as facts' can only be seen to be doctrines, and not facts, after great efforts of thought, and usually only with the aid of a first-rate metaphysician.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 1:56 pmMy view is that both Iambiguous and Gary are 'stuck' within this problem.

What problem? As it relates how to the entirely different lives we might live, accumulating entirely different moral and political convictions precipitating entirely different behaviors attached to entirely different religious dogmas pertaining to objective morality, immortality and salvation.

No, really, just imagine someone like AJ at the Pearly Gates spouting this scholastic bullshit. Imagine their reaction to it!!!

AJ to God:

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 1:56 pmI recognize, naturally, my own relationship with the issue, and yet I am aware of the various ways that I have attempted to surmount it and also to some degree succeeded. But it is a question of degrees since I believe we are all subsumed, more or less, in this existential and metaphysical problem.

My own view runs like this: If one tries to bend the Bible Tales, which are pictures that are in so many ways incommensurate with our perceived experience, to be for one an Absolute Picture of reality, one will be disappointed. The picture, qua picture, simply cannot quite function. And trying to make it function leads to difficulties and disfunction.

So then one must deliberately stand back from *it* (the total picture offered as an invitation to step into it) and attempt to avail oneself of that master metaphysician to whom we do not have recourse, who is not present for us, and yet try to see and if you will extract the kernel of meaning which shines though -- and I say *beyond any shadow of a doubt*.

But with that statement made, I would argue for a recognition of value as evidenced by the quality of the World that had been created, based on belief in what I refer to as The Picture; and it is there where we have to focus to give validity to what I say is "metaphysical content".

Would -- could -- God ever stop laughing?

"it implies they have an extra dimension to them beyond the mundane. And that is where the superstitious nonsense comes in."

Indeed harbal. The concept/word 'evil' stigmatizes with morality and mystery what otherwise falls under the general rubric of natural intuition in social animals. As the great X factor philosopher HumAnize once said 'don't do evil shit', which would involve stuff like philosophically unjustified murder. Like I know what he means and if u don't have brain damage, u do too. All that's being inferred here is the existence of a natural altruism that is very statistically real in human societies.

But bro when it's called 'evil' a spooky element is added that gets people all bent out of shape and horrified... and their misunderstanding of the cause of the 'evil' thing is matched only by their unforgiving disposition toward the phenomena. It's really a bad situation. Human behavior is mystified by the concept 'evil' and in being so, attention is taken away from the truth of the matter; that man is responsible for himself and there are no godly standards or rules or laws or providence in general to appeal to. Thank u and good day gentlemen.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 6:28 pm

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 6:07 pm So, I invite you again to bring your own didactic assessments "down to Earth" and examine them in regard to these...

AJ responds thusly

That you allow yourself to be reduced down to "posts" like this speaks volumes.

Now, it's just my own rooted existentially in dasein personal opinion, of course, but I am making a fool out of you here. And of those like you now for years.