Christianity

[Gary Childress]

It occurs to me that one of the most important and defensible effects of Christian metaphysical and philosophical doctrine can be located in the conceptions of how *love* is understood.

Dubious:

Thinking it over, and referencing Christian influence, another area of verifiable and important development and evolution is in that of “conscience”. You know, shame cultures and shame ethics compared with guilt cultures and guilt ethics.

To be (merely) ashamed by what others think or say was the convention, but to internalize ethical and moral principles, to which one assented morally — that is I think a higher dimension. A conscientious man and one with a conscience is (largely) a Christian creation.

Related to conscience one should recognize responsibility as having evolved through Christian influence. Not to say that it is not a complex and fraught area (feeling or belief), still the sense of guilt changes how one becomes (or does not become) responsible.

Ok Mr Quacking duck I give you the floor.

Make it good …

Does conscience or responsibility not play a role in other religions? And if that is your belief, why do you think so?

[iambiguous]

The Ontological Argument Revisited
Peter Mullen explores the argument that by definition, God exists.

Some of the most renowned logicians of modern times have accepted one or other variety of the Ontological Argument, including Kurt Gödel, the inventor of the Incompleteness Theorem (who, incidentally, deliberately starved himself to death). Even the professional atheist Bertrand Russell accepted it for a time. As he writes in his Autobiography:

“I remember the precise moment, one day in 1894, as I was walking along Trinity Lane, when I saw in a flash (or thought I saw) that the Ontological Argument is valid. I had gone out to buy a tin of tobacco; on my way back, I suddenly threw it up in the air and exclaimed as I caught it, ‘Great Scott, the Ontological Argument is sound’.”

And, truly, it might be thought of as sound by anyone. After all, it is just an argument. It's not really connected to any substantive or substantial empirical, experiential, or experimental evidence. You think about God and the existence of existence itself. You think up a collection of premises. You think up a conclusion the premises lead to. In your head.

Then all that's left is to pin down which denomination this defined and deduced into existence God belongs to. And, of course, the part that revolves around theodicy.

Kant, however, rejected Anselm’s reasoning, famously arguing that existence ‘is not a predicate’. He meant by this that existence is not a contingent property of a thing, like its roundness or blueness can be. The implication of Kant’s position is that we cannot as it were simply conjure things into existence by mere words, as the Ontological Argument might seem to do.

See, I told you. Merely believing that something or someone exists in your head is not the same as actually demonstrating that it or he or she does in fact exist. On the other hand, how can one posit a deontological moral philosophy unless there is, in fact, a God "out there" able ultimately to judge our behaviors?

If only Kant had access to IC's collection of YouTube videos...

In Kant’s own words: “A hundred real thalers do not contain the least coin more than a hundred possible thalers. My financial position is, however, affected very differently by a hundred real thalers than it is by the mere concept of them.”

Same with our souls...with immortality and salvation. A God defined and deduced into existence -- a concept of God -- is very, very different from a God that has actually been shown to exist.

[Immanuel Can]

If only Kant had access to IC's collection of YouTube videos...

Well, he seems to me to have been a man who did not lack consistency or intellectual courage, and who seems to have believed he could defend his own views...so I expect he would have watched them, at the very least.

So I suspect it would have led to some very good conversation.

[iambiguous]

iam, with incredulity, (rhetorically) asked: "So, with a straight face, henry is going to tell us that his best buddy IC has not made every effort to bring him over to accepting Jesus Christ as his personal savior?!!"

I can't say if Mannie gave it his best shot. Only he can say.

Come on, if henry believed he could demonstrate the actual existence of the Christian God, a God able to provide us with moral Commandments on this side of the grave and immortality and salvation on the other side of it, would he or would he not make every effort to bring this extraordinary revelation to his friends?

By the way, I did watch one of IC's legendary 16 videos:

Okay, above, IC recommended to Gary Childress that he "try the video on meaning"

That's this one: https://youtu.be/NKGnXgH_CzE

Go ahead, watch it. I did.

Basically, what is being argued here is that, as the Christian woman says, in the absence of God, all things are permitted. That as philosophers like Camus noted, No God and human existence is essentially meaningless and absurd.

In other words [and I agree with this] if there is no God than there is no basis for objective morality. It is all merely the result of the evolution of life on Earth and "human conventions".

So, the atheist suggests that "human flourishing" ought to be the criteria. And the Christian woman then points out [rightly in my view] that if there is no God than who is to say what flourishing means? She points out how Hitler thought that his Nazi policies were what would accomplish this. And, she notes, certain philosophers have argued that using the tools of philosophy will not lead us to objective morality. And I agree with this in turn.

Then she gets to the bottom line for most Christians: "What happens after you die"?

No God, no afterlife.

She 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."

But then the Atheist makes the point, "Well, that doesn't prove that Christianity is true".

And she agrees. She merely points out again how comforted and consoled you can be if you do believe in Christianity.

Perhaps henry will watch it himself. See if it brings him over to Jesus Christ.

I tell you this, though (for what it's worth): when we talk to each other, we actually talk 'to' each other. Our conversations are not exercises in one-upmanship. We don't agree on many things. We always, however, respect one another and are, therefore, respectful 'to' one another. I believe Mannie is an honorable man; I'd like to , believe he thinks the same of me.

Again, it's like we're in an episode of The Twilight Zone here.

What on Earth does it matter what he and Mannie talk about "here and now" when the fate of his very soul is at stake?!!

It's simply ridiculous to imagine Mannie, a friend of his, being able to save his soul and not quoting over and again to henry from the Christian Bible and not urging henry to watch those videos in order to accomplish it.

iam asked (rhetorically): "What's the skinny here with you and IC and Jesus Christ?"

I've defined my relationship with Mannie just above. I have nuthin' more to say on it, to you or anyone. As for Jesus and Mannie: talk to Mannie. As for Jesus and me: I have a great deal of respect for the man as he appears in The Jefferson Bible.

Again and again: that's all in regard to the measly 70 odd years we're around on this side of the grave. We're talking about his soul, his very God-given essence. The part able to attain immortality and salvation if Mannie is ever interested in saving it by bringing him over to Christ.

iam (rhetorically) asserted: "Anyone who truly did believe they had demonstrable evidence that a God, the God, their God did in fact exist would do everything in their power to spread the news."

Why? I, for example, believe it is possible to demonstrate (the possibility of) God's existence. I've offered what I see as the chief evidences, multiple times, in-forum. But, I certainly haven't done 'everything in my power to spread the news'. Why should I?

Why?

Okay, let henry stay up there in la la land. But the reason the overwhelming preponderance of mere mortals are interested in God and religion doesn't change. With God you have access to objective morality -- Commandments! -- on this side of the grave and to immortality and salvation for your very soul on the other side of it.

And, please, aside from the usual "world of words" tautologies...the spiritual arguments that we get in which God is defined and deduced into existence up in the clouds...what actual evidence has he ever provided us that the Deist God does in fact exist? Any YouTube videos he can direct us to?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Same with our souls...with immortality and salvation. A God defined and deduced into existence -- a concept of God -- is very, very different from a God that has actually been shown to exist.

You are stuck in a place similar to our own quack Dubious. In your case your ‘faith’, which I gather was not so well grounded, took hit after hit until it ‘fragmented’. Your virulent nihilism, with attendant moral nihilism, rose up as replacement (my interpretation). But yet you are still deeply, even exclusively, involved with the problem (oddly enough).

Personally, I think your error is in asking for a *proof* that will (or can) resolve your faith-problem. Hitting your head against that wall and doing that for years has done a number on your grey matter though! That seems evident.

(Check out Section 4, Subsection 7 of my Ten Week Email Course, I’ve included more nuggets and tidbits there …)

Mystics and faithful practitioners receive proof through inner experience, right? Yet you are locked out of that. But I think there is another order of proof but it is indirect: the effects that are known (or knowable).

My own take, my understanding, is that predominantly on this forum are dozens of functional illiterates. Very very insufficiently informed by and familiar with the literary productions of their own culture (not only literature but art and also music). So, they are unfamiliar with the ‘effects’ of faith and belief which are revealed through the content of that material.

As a sideways illustration Harold Bloom proposes that *Shakespeare invented the human*.

Bloom’s thesis is that Shakespeare ‘teaches us how and what to perceive, and he also instructs us how and what to sense and then to experience as sensation’. In creating what Shelley called ‘forms more living than real men’, he is the greatest master at ‘exploiting the void between persons and the personal ideal’. Once he has made this point, somewhat repetitively, and gets down to specifics, Bloom grows more penetrating. The clue to Shakespeare’s ‘preternatural’ ability to endow his characters with personalities lies in his ‘vitalism’ (or what Hazlitt called ‘gusto’). As the likes of Falstaff are (in a phrase borrowed from Ben Jonson) ‘rammed with life’, so, too, are the murderous villains (Aaron, Richard III, Iago, Edmund, Macbeth) and the comic villains (Shylock, Malvolio, Caliban).

But let’s take “teaches us how and what to perceive, and […] instructs us how and what to sense and then to experience as sensation” at a different level and see it as “indirect effect” of the influences that have come substantially through Revelation.

In any case, these are ideas I work with.

True, this is indirect proof and will never be sufficient for those of us with so very little intellectual grounding that indirect evidence is meaningless since, really every fucking thing is void of meaning (!)

But I suggest that for those with higher literacy (I really mean this at a higher level than it is normally taken) the reality of the existence of profound effect is definitely known.

I wonder if the issue I am outlining has some relationship to the statement that “to those who have something more will be given, but those who have nothing from them it is taken away”?

Again, these are larger and general problems and the discussion of them is not intended as an invitation to scrap with those referred to, directly or indirectly.

[Gary Childress]

(Check out Section 4, Subsection 7 of my Ten Week Email Course, I’ve included more nuggets and tidbits there …)

Somehow, it almost seems as if AJ is more involved in selling than he is in what he actually produces. I can almost envision an army of termites (unable to lead themselves) ready to do his bidding.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Alexis Jacobi]

Could this help?

[iambiguous]

If only Kant had access to IC's collection of YouTube videos...

Well, he seems to me to have been a man who did not lack consistency or intellectual courage, and who seems to have believed he could defend his own views...so I expect he would have watched them, at the very least.

So I suspect it would have led to some very good conversation.

Please. He thought up -- philosophically -- a God that is "out there" somewhere prepared to judge him worthy of immortality and salvation. He predicates categorically and imperatively the obligation of mere mortals to live morally on the philosophical assumption that God does exist.

So, where is Kant's own "demonstrable proof" that a God, the God, the Christian God did in fact exist?

Oh, and as I noted to you and to henry above, I watched one of the videos. And commented on it.

So, is that your idea of demonstrating the Christian God does in fact reside in Heaven?

Though it wouldn't surprise me in the least if it is.

[Gary Childress]

Could this help?

AJ goes for the cheap shot. I must be getting warm--if not pinged him on the head. So Harbal is a "termite" (according to AJ) because....are you ready folks! ...because Harbal won't let AJ lead him around by the nose. At least when I masturbate I don't fuck up people's minds or even fuck up women's bodies.

My advice to the more unsuspecting members of the forum, take care when dealing with AJ. He's looking for sheep to follow him.

Anyway, back to you AJ.

[Immanuel Can]

If only Kant had access to IC's collection of YouTube videos...

Well, he seems to me to have been a man who did not lack consistency or intellectual courage, and who seems to have believed he could defend his own views...so I expect he would have watched them, at the very least.

So I suspect it would have led to some very good conversation.

So, where is Kant's own "demonstrable proof" that a God, the God, the Christian God did in fact exist?

I didn't say I agreed with Kant. Nor did I attribute to him any particular "proof."

I just said he was not the sort to be too craven to watch a few videos, had he had some. And I suspect he'd have interesting and relevant things to say in response.

[iambiguous]

Same with our souls...with immortality and salvation. A God defined and deduced into existence -- a concept of God -- is very, very different from a God that has actually been shown to exist.

You are stuck in a place similar to our own quack Dubious. In your case your ‘faith’, which I gather was not so well grounded, took hit after hit until it ‘fragmented’. Your virulent nihilism, with attendant moral nihilism, rose up as replacement (my interpretation). But yet you are still deeply, even exclusively, involved with the problem (oddly enough).

Personally, I think your error is in asking for a *proof* that will (or can) resolve your faith-problem. Hitting your head against that wall and doing that for years has done a number on your grey matter though! That seems evident.

(Check out Section 4, Subsection 7 of my Ten Week Email Course, I’ve included more nuggets and tidbits there …)

Mystics and faithful practitioners receive proof through inner experience, right? Yet you are locked out of that. But I think there is another order of proof but it is indirect: the effects that are known (or knowable).

My own take, my understanding, is that predominantly on this forum are dozens of functional illiterates. Very very insufficiently informed by and familiar with the literary productions of their own culture (not only literature but art and also music). So, they are unfamiliar with the ‘effects’ of faith and belief which are revealed through the content of that material.

As a sideways illustration Harold Bloom proposes that *Shakespeare invented the human*.

Bloom’s thesis is that Shakespeare ‘teaches us how and what to perceive, and he also instructs us how and what to sense and then to experience as sensation’. In creating what Shelley called ‘forms more living than real men’, he is the greatest master at ‘exploiting the void between persons and the personal ideal’. Once he has made this point, somewhat repetitively, and gets down to specifics, Bloom grows more penetrating. The clue to Shakespeare’s ‘preternatural’ ability to endow his characters with personalities lies in his ‘vitalism’ (or what Hazlitt called ‘gusto’). As the likes of Falstaff are (in a phrase borrowed from Ben Jonson) ‘rammed with life’, so, too, are the murderous villains (Aaron, Richard III, Iago, Edmund, Macbeth) and the comic villains (Shylock, Malvolio, Caliban).

But let’s take “teaches us how and what to perceive, and […] instructs us how and what to sense and then to experience as sensation” at a different level and see it as “indirect effect” of the influences that have come substantially through Revelation.

In any case, these are ideas I work with.

True, this is indirect proof and will never be sufficient for those of us with so very little intellectual grounding that indirect evidence is meaningless since, really every fucking thing is void of meaning (!)

But I suggest that for those with higher literacy (I really mean this at a higher level than it is normally taken) the reality of the existence of profound effect is definitely known.

I wonder if the issue I am outlining has some relationship to the statement that “to those who have something more will be given, but those who have nothing from them it is taken away”?

Again, these are larger and general problems and the discussion of them is not intended as an invitation to scrap with those referred to, directly or indirectly.

Has anyone noticed how Jacobi writes a lot, but says hardly anything? It seems to be symptomatic of something, but what?

Yep, that just about sums it all up for some of us here.

Though, sure, the same is no doubt said about me by others.

Again, if you ever do have any actual demonstrable proof to substantiate your own ponderous, painfully pedantic assessments of God and religion, please bring it here.

Yes, a part of me really does want to believe again in the Christian God as I once did.

As a kid.

[Gary Childress]

Same with our souls...with immortality and salvation. A God defined and deduced into existence -- a concept of God -- is very, very different from a God that has actually been shown to exist.

You are stuck in a place similar to our own quack Dubious. In your case your ‘faith’, which I gather was not so well grounded, took hit after hit until it ‘fragmented’. Your virulent nihilism, with attendant moral nihilism, rose up as replacement (my interpretation). But yet you are still deeply, even exclusively, involved with the problem (oddly enough).

Personally, I think your error is in asking for a *proof* that will (or can) resolve your faith-problem. Hitting your head against that wall and doing that for years has done a number on your grey matter though! That seems evident.

(Check out Section 4, Subsection 7 of my Ten Week Email Course, I’ve included more nuggets and tidbits there …)

Mystics and faithful practitioners receive proof through inner experience, right? Yet you are locked out of that. But I think there is another order of proof but it is indirect: the effects that are known (or knowable).

My own take, my understanding, is that predominantly on this forum are dozens of functional illiterates. Very very insufficiently informed by and familiar with the literary productions of their own culture (not only literature but art and also music). So, they are unfamiliar with the ‘effects’ of faith and belief which are revealed through the content of that material.

As a sideways illustration Harold Bloom proposes that *Shakespeare invented the human*.

Bloom’s thesis is that Shakespeare ‘teaches us how and what to perceive, and he also instructs us how and what to sense and then to experience as sensation’. In creating what Shelley called ‘forms more living than real men’, he is the greatest master at ‘exploiting the void between persons and the personal ideal’. Once he has made this point, somewhat repetitively, and gets down to specifics, Bloom grows more penetrating. The clue to Shakespeare’s ‘preternatural’ ability to endow his characters with personalities lies in his ‘vitalism’ (or what Hazlitt called ‘gusto’). As the likes of Falstaff are (in a phrase borrowed from Ben Jonson) ‘rammed with life’, so, too, are the murderous villains (Aaron, Richard III, Iago, Edmund, Macbeth) and the comic villains (Shylock, Malvolio, Caliban).

But let’s take “teaches us how and what to perceive, and […] instructs us how and what to sense and then to experience as sensation” at a different level and see it as “indirect effect” of the influences that have come substantially through Revelation.

In any case, these are ideas I work with.

True, this is indirect proof and will never be sufficient for those of us with so very little intellectual grounding that indirect evidence is meaningless since, really every fucking thing is void of meaning (!)

But I suggest that for those with higher literacy (I really mean this at a higher level than it is normally taken) the reality of the existence of profound effect is definitely known.

I wonder if the issue I am outlining has some relationship to the statement that “to those who have something more will be given, but those who have nothing from them it is taken away”?

Again, these are larger and general problems and the discussion of them is not intended as an invitation to scrap with those referred to, directly or indirectly.

Has anyone noticed how Jacobi writes a lot, but says hardly anything? It seems to be symptomatic of something, but what?

Yep, that just about sums it all up for some of us here.

Though, sure, the same is no doubt said about me by others.

Again, if you ever do have any actual demonstrable proof to substantiate your own ponderous, painfully pedantic assessments of God and religion, please bring it here.

Yes, a part of me really does want to believe again in the Christian God as I once did.

As a kid.

OK. Point taken. I was unjustly hard on AJ. I apologize. But all the talk about the spread of war on the horizon that I'm seeing on my Microsoft Edge landing page is making me "edgy".

[Alexis Jacobi]

Any YouTube videos he can direct us to?

I have 14 life changing videos but they are behind a (significant) paywall.

[Gary Childress]

Any YouTube videos he can direct us to?

I have 14 life changing videos but they are behind a (significant) paywall.

What will the videos change life into?

[Alexis Jacobi]

"He's looking for sheep to follow him."

No, I look for sheep to devour!