Christianity

[Harbal]

As far as I'm aware, neither science nor academia in general take the supernatural into account during the course of their investigations, and who are we to say they are being remiss?

Actually, since Postmodernism especially, both have come back into play significantly. The view that science is going to be the comprehensive answer to truth is no longer accepted in the academy, for various reasons; and while it is not advanced often under the heading "supernatural," the metaphysical has also returned. The "Enlightenment" belief that both were permanently receding has been severely undermined by the new critiques...not from religious sources, but entirely from secular ones.

But there's a lot to be said about that, and it will take some reading for a person raised in the post-Enlightenment enthusiasms of the earlier part of the

I don't know how much truth there is in that, and I don't know how much I.C. spin you have put on it, so I'll ignore it, if you don't mind.

[Immanuel Can]

As far as I'm aware, neither science nor academia in general take the supernatural into account during the course of their investigations, and who are we to say they are being remiss?

Actually, since Postmodernism especially, both have come back into play significantly. The view that science is going to be the comprehensive answer to truth is no longer accepted in the academy, for various reasons; and while it is not advanced often under the heading "supernatural," the metaphysical has also returned. The "Enlightenment" belief that both were permanently receding has been severely undermined by the new critiques...not from religious sources, but entirely from secular ones.

But there's a lot to be said about that, and it will take some reading for a person raised in the post-Enlightenment enthusiasms of the earlier part of the

I don't know how much truth there is in that, and I don't know how much I.C. spin you have put on it, so I'll ignore it, if you don't mind.

Why not investigate it, instead. You'll find out I'm telling you the truth. Why would I lie? It would be too easy to find the lie out, in this case.

[Harbal]

I don't care about the same things you seem to, that's for sure.

You do not seem to care about much of anything, to be more truthful.

Or at least nothing that I can be bothered to tell you about.

But you situate yourself within the very center of an issue that you declare has no relevancy or importance for you.

I go where the people who need sorting out are.

I interpret you as *empty man*.

And I interpret you as big-fish-in-a-little-pond man.

Btw. is empty man a step up, or a step down, from termite man.

I am not at all concerned about your choices Harbal.

I don't imagine anyone else is concerned about them, either, so why should you be?

You are irrelevant.

I daresay I am, but in what way do you imagine you are relevant?

Now, please write some childish and inane comment as if that is a reasonable and reasoned retort.

I hope you find the above to your satisfaction.

[promethean75]

[Racial slurs redacted by iMod]

[Alexis Jacobi]

I don't know how much truth there is in that, and I don't know how much I.C. spin you have put on it, so I'll ignore it, if you don't mind.

Please excuse me for intervening. But without any shame for making direct statements I will say here, again, that your attitude Harbal is one of a dedicated ignoramus. This perfectly illustrates the statements I make about you. If you do not know if there is or is not truth in what was said you are duty-bound to examine the issue. By doing so, you would then be able to say how much of what IC said is *spin* (whatever the heck that means coming from you) and what, precisely, is objectively true. Instead, you resort to harbalism: "I'll simply ignore having to think about any of it one way or the other". And doing that, you jettison yourself from participation at any level in a genuine conversation, and reveal, very clearly, what you really are up to here.

As I said you are so marvelously emblematic of a common trend that, if you'd be so kind, I'd like to have you stuffed and hung on the wall of my den.

The plaque shall read:

Ignarus anglicus haribalus jacobi

I discovered you, thus I get the glory!

[Alexis Jacobi]

Btw, is empty man a step up, or a step down, from termite man.

They operate together. Man becomes "emptied' of determining, decisive power, and as a result is reduced to an entity that merely consumes. But that consuming requires a substrate to feed on. And so, as it happens, Termite Man appears.

Understanding nothing, caring about nothing, yet filled with a *masticating* appetite, he destroys what took a thousand years to build.

Selah

[Harbal]

Actually, since Postmodernism especially, both have come back into play significantly. The view that science is going to be the comprehensive answer to truth is no longer accepted in the academy, for various reasons; and while it is not advanced often under the heading "supernatural," the metaphysical has also returned. The "Enlightenment" belief that both were permanently receding has been severely undermined by the new critiques...not from religious sources, but entirely from secular ones.

But there's a lot to be said about that, and it will take some reading for a person raised in the post-Enlightenment enthusiasms of the earlier part of the

I don't know how much truth there is in that, and I don't know how much I.C. spin you have put on it, so I'll ignore it, if you don't mind.

Why not investigate it, instead. You'll find out I'm telling you the truth.

Because I wouldn't know what I'm supposed to be investigating, or where to go to investigate it.

Why would I lie?

[Harbal]

I don't know how much truth there is in that, and I don't know how much I.C. spin you have put on it, so I'll ignore it, if you don't mind.

Please excuse me for intervening.

Feel free.

[Immanuel Can]

I don't know how much truth there is in that, and I don't know how much I.C. spin you have put on it, so I'll ignore it, if you don't mind.

Why not investigate it, instead. You'll find out I'm telling you the truth.

Because I wouldn't know what I'm supposed to be investigating, or where to go to investigate it.

Why would I lie?

Well, the information is very publicly and widely available. But I understand the reluctance; not only is a lot of it fairly demanding reading, but also it's a little disquieting to realize how badly the "modern" narratives have been beaten up by the "postmodern" narratives, particularly if the triumphalist, "modern," story is what one has been brought up on. But what's interesting is that it's all in the completely secular realm. You could avoid theologians entirely, on this point, and still find the same.

But I don't ask you to take my word for it, even if you would. Still, the information is available to anyone with the will to seek it out. I think something like Walter Truett Anderson's Reality Isn't What It Used to Be or Zygmunt Bauman's Liquid Modernity would give you the story in an understandable form. Academics could go for Joseph Margolis's Life Without Principles, or something like that.

So, as they say in the X-Files, "The truth is out there..."

[Harbal]

Well, the information is very publicly and widely available. But I understand the reluctance; not only is a lot of it fairly demanding reading.............

I thought you knew me better than to suggest I do anything demanding, IC.

[iambiguous]

Reasons to Abandon Christianity
Chaz Bufe

Christianity is based on fear.

While today there are liberal clergy who preach a gospel of love, they ignore the bulk of Christian teachings, not to mention the bulk of Christian history.

The part where we are directed to Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Meanwhile in the Old Testament when Jesus Christ was just plain old God -- https://www.patheos.com/blogs/freethoug ... nt-verses/ https://www.adamhamilton.com/blog/gods- ... e-problem/ -- all manner of ghastly horrors unfolded.

Who wouldn't fear the Almighty given "the wrath of God" back there "in the beginning".

Throughout almost its entire time on Earth, the motor driving Christianity has been—in addition to the fear of death—fear of the Devil and fear of Hell. One can only imagine how potent these threats seemed prior to the rise of science and rational thinking, which have largely robbed these bogeys of their power to inspire terror.

And human beings have always needed one thing or another to maintain and then to sustain ordered communities in which certain behaviors were rewarded and others punished. Only with God, the ecclesiastics were able to take that "beyond the grave". With Santa Claus, if kids were naughty, they might not get any presents at Christmas. With God, if they were naughty [and from the cradle to the grave], they could burn in Hell for all of eternity.

Then the part where those like Marx suggested that the ruling class could always use God and religion as the "opiate of the people".

And, of course, before science came around to explain things that were once attributed entirely to God or to the Devil, God and the Devil [back then] could readily become the explanation for...everything.

But even today, the existence of the Devil and Hell are cardinal doctrinal tenets of almost all Christian creeds, and many fundamentalist preachers still openly resort to terrorizing their followers with lurid, sadistic portraits of the suffering of nonbelievers after death.

Indeed, this is the part, in my view, those like Immanuel Can tend to avoid. Why? Because the more this grim and horrific and frightful fate awaits those who refuse to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior, the more ridiculous they appear in refusing to provide us with actual substantive evidence that their God does in fact exist.

This is not an attempt to convince through logic and reason; it is not an attempt to appeal to the better nature of individuals; rather, it is an attempt to whip the flock into line through threats, through appeals to a base part of human nature—fear and cowardice.

Logic and reason? Telling enough, consuming the fruit from the "tree of knowledge" resulted Original Sin. And the Old Testament God implanted this sin into all the rest of us. We are still punished for something they did.

On the other hand, can one imagine Jesus Christ doing something like this?

[Immanuel Can]

Well, the information is very publicly and widely available. But I understand the reluctance; not only is a lot of it fairly demanding reading.............

I thought you knew me better than to suggest I do anything demanding, IC.

Okay.

I just wanted you to know you have the option. I wasn't bluffing you, but you can choose your own reading and your own pint at the pub, of course.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Sure, everything is understandable, but what should and shouldn't I believe to be true? Can you tell me that?

Gary asks a good question, but I think it should be modified away from "I'll tell you something" -- which places it on a personal plane -- and back toward "What sort of things can genuinely be said to be true?"

What is true on the natural plane, the plane of nature, the Earth? I believe I have already stated that in my way of seeing, which I admit to being subjective interpretation, but which yet seems right, is that we do not discover and we cannot extract metaphysical truths from natural processes.

So, the earth-sciences define truths that are more like sensible explanations about why certain things go on as they do.

It is only in the human world where (what I refer to as) metaphysics enters in. Simply put, an idea, a concept, a wide and general view, and also an interpretation -- these are metaphysical. I choose not to focus on the definition of metaphysical as a sort of miraculous magic. i.e. the intervening in the natural world of some power or entity that is understood to be above or outside of nature.

So I take metaphysics at the most basic level. Our 'psyche' is a metaphysical entity it seems to me. To be human is to have a psyche certainly but also to be a metaphysical creature. To operate with a strong and determining idea (say for example that of the realization of justice) is to operate with and work with a metaphysical idea.

If I understand what, say, "comes to us" from the metaphysical domain as being essentially insubstantial in the sense of not materially quantifiable or locatable, then what exactly is *it*? Can it be said to *exist* if it cannot be, say, isolated or captured?

So if ever there is something *quintessential"

quintessence
Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. the fifth essence, of which the heavenly bodies were thought to be made, distinguished from the four elements of fire, air, water, and earth; hence, the most pure essence or most perfect embodiment of a thing or being. — quintessential.

it is to be located in what I am trying to refer to. It does not *exist* and yet it certainly exists.

It seems to me that in order to talk about the *truth* of the very essences of what we are talking about, that we don't have much choice except to conceive of the metaphysical dimension as what is actually being discussed. But how are the *truths* that are discerned as 'operating' at those levels defined? Who has defined them? And when comparing various of the declarations that arise from them (an invisible, intuited world that is realized in ways different from standard measuring, as in weights and sizes) how are these things adjudicated? And, importantly, do hierarchies of value exist? and can these be said to be *real*?

[Alexis Jacobi]

"You on the other hand — but not to compare of course — constantly surprise. Are you stuck as well? How do you assess yourself?"

Well like any ordinary Joes we've been poisoned by pascal's wager... basically scared to death by Christianity and broken down by it, a permanent mind fuck that we have to suffer until we die kinda thing. There's so much we wanna do but won't becuz we can't be sure god doesn't exist (the christian one). It's horrible. Like living a nightmare. And it gets worse; if we are genuine nihilists we should not worry ourselves with the fact that we were wrong, god didn't exist, and we wasted our whole life living in fear... if in fact we were wrong. We couldn't legitimately complain about it becuz 'nothing matters anyway' etc. It's a hopelessly depressing logically solid lifetime mindfuck that afflicts man.

It seems to me that there is a way to put in reverse the negative assessment of what is implied by accepting *that God exists*. In other words, why must it be seen as the negative?

Sorry, this is not a very fulsome response but I did want to say something.

[Iwannaplato]

Well like any ordinary Joes we've been poisoned by pascal's wager

Pascal's Wager was aimed at theists not non-believers. It was 'Hey, why not continue to believe, what'd'ya got to lose' than 'Hey, join us, otherwise you might go to Hell.'