Philosophy Now Forum

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 1:50 pm syncretism
syn·cre·tism (sĭng′krĭ-tĭz′əm, sĭn′-)
n.
1. Reconciliation or fusion of differing systems of belief, as in philosophy or religion, especially when success is partial or the result is heterogeneous.

Did you examine this definition?

Are you familiar with the word "heterogeneous"?

It means, "incommensurable," as in, "two things that don't belong together." And that's exactly right. Christianity has no rightful association with Roman paganism. What Constantine did was "heterogeneous." And heretical, actually.

Processes of syncretism can be compared to what is both lost and what is gained in translation (from one language to another).

No, that's not right, even by your own definition. You've left out the "heterogeneous" quality of syncretism, namely that it is always illegitimate, because it forces together things that do not fit or belong together, to the detriment of at least one, maybe both of them.

One reference from Colossians has been mentioned by those who see in Paul's methods and content of communication (kerygma) a neo-Platonic influence:

Colossians 2:16-23: Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—“Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

Here is a description offered by someone proposing that the language terms used (shadow/substance) provide the suggestion, or the evidence, of familiarity with Greek philosophical concepts:

Yes, here and elsewhere Paul manifests that he KNEW the Greek, Platonic concepts. But you've overlooked one huge, obvious fact: he's debunking, not approving them. Did you not notice? How could you miss that?

It's an extremely bizarre way to argue, to say that if Paul mentions (say) a gnostic concept and forbids people to adopt it, that therefore he's "influenced" by it, and must be pursuing its sycretistic inclusion in Christianity. It's the dead opposite of what is plainly true in the case. How does one expect to pull that off, since one is supplying the evidence of the defeat of one's own theory?

You're very puzzling, AJ...you're smart enough to get half way to a good point, but then, it seems, your longing to be thought authoritative takes over, and you can't seem to get free from your initial false hypothesis, because you don't want to be seen to be wrong in any way. If it were anybody else, I would say that it was a manifestation of a hubristic need to be seen by others to be right taking over from a reasonably able brain, and defeating the learning process. But I don't know you well enough to make such an assessment for sure.

However, if that's right, I should maybe point out that people won't think less of you if you can modify your hypothesis and learn. They'll think more. The truth is that nobody's going to believe you "had it all right already" before you got here. So there's no reason to defend a hypothesis that is so clearly undermined by the evidence, is there?

The struggle between Christianity and Neoplatonism is one of the most curious and interesting chapters in the history of religion. The two systems had so much in common that at first sight we should wonder why they quarreled, if it were not a matter of common observation that no people hate and distrust each other more than those who like to express the same ideas in slightly different language.

That there was a struggle of Christianity against Neoplatonism, we would both agree. But it was a struggle against syncretism, the incorporation of two heterogeneous systems of belief, as is clearly evident from Paul in Colossians. One can draw no other conclusion. Nothing forced Neoplatonism and nominal Christianity together faster than Catholicism. And that this melding was heterogeneous and illegitimate, hence syncretistic, is a point on which we should both agree: the Catholic hierarchy never had any business forcing such a melding to happen, and those who rejected and resisted it, far from being burned at the stake, should probably have become heroes of the faith for defending Christianity against the false doctrine of Neoplatonism.

I guess what your interpretation depends on is this: was Catholicism the rightful course of Christianity, or the sycretistic bastard of Roman paganism and gnosticism syncretistically and illegitimately (or heterogeneously) forced together with the trappings of Christianity? My thesis, based on the Biblical text, would be the latter. Yours, I'm thinking, is that Catholicism has to BE the only Christianity, so the Neoplatonism it contains has to be regarded as legitimate -- and hence, not syncretistic in any literal sense at all.

That would account for the disparity in our reading of the historical data. Mine is based on the text of Scripture, and yours on the insistence on the centrality of Catholicism and its "developmental" reading of tradition.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 2:45 pmHowever, even when The Secularization Hypothesis was believed, nobody argued that Constantine made Christianity more secular, nor that secularization, when it seemed to be happening, was a product of Catholicism. Rather, the argument was that the Protestant Reformation, bringing into question as it did the authority of the pronouncements of the popes and councils, undermined the practice of blind obedience among the laity, and set free the spirit of individual inquiry that would launch the scientific and industrial revolutions, and eventually the information revolution, as well. The Reformation, it was thought, was the first step toward the secular "Enlightenment" that would undergird the modern period.

If I read Brother Dubious correctly, and I suspect that I did, I believe that what he meant to say is that when Cristianity-Catholicism became the state religion -- and it very certainly did and operated as such for centuries -- that it necessarily became a state religious enterprise, veering away, let's say, from world-renunciation to world-development and structural consolidation.

One could then say that the impetus of original Christianity fractured in notable ways. It became necessary to modify Christian *hatred* of the world to something far more world-accepting. So a social, cultural and also an administrative ethos developed that must be seen as Christian-esque. Those who were drawn to and inclined to asceticism and renunciation were assigned a place and a role (in monasticism) while *the world* and all its endeavors could continue on but, at least to some degree, under a restaining influence of a neo-Christian outlook.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 2:02 pm Now, if you blathering nutcases would shut the fuck up for a moment I will reiterate the point I made earlier. Quoting IC:

Yes, everyone just shut up, and stop making a big fuss about nothing; especially you, Jacobi, you are the worst. If you want to believe something barmy, just believe it and let everyone else do the same. Whether it's IC's scriptures, henry quirks natural rights, or Jacobi's God knows what; who cares? Just stop telling those who have the good sense not to believe any of it that they are misguided fools.

Gee, harbal, it's almost like you're sayin' we have no right to disagree with misguided fools, or that we ought to keep our opinions to ourselves while misguided fools vomit up whatever manure they like, unchallenged.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 3:39 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 2:45 pmHowever, even when The Secularization Hypothesis was believed, nobody argued that Constantine made Christianity more secular, nor that secularization, when it seemed to be happening, was a product of Catholicism. Rather, the argument was that the Protestant Reformation, bringing into question as it did the authority of the pronouncements of the popes and councils, undermined the practice of blind obedience among the laity, and set free the spirit of individual inquiry that would launch the scientific and industrial revolutions, and eventually the information revolution, as well. The Reformation, it was thought, was the first step toward the secular "Enlightenment" that would undergird the modern period.

If I read Brother Dubious correctly, and I suspect that I did, I believe that what he meant to say is that when Cristianity-Catholicism became the state religion -- and it very certainly did and operated as such for centuries -- that it necessarily became a state religious enterprise, veering away, let's say, from world-renunciation to world-development and structural consolidation.

Right. And to a complete violation of the authorization of Jesus Christ, who said, "My kingdom is not of this world." (John 18:36) The Romanish world went on a furious project of empire building, the detriment of the reputation of Christianity and in defiance of the explicit teaching of Messiah.

It became necessary to modify Christian *hatred* of the world to something far more world-accepting.

We have to be cautious with this word "world," which Scripturally is used in two different ways, the difference being discerned from context in each case.

One is "world" as a physical entity, as the planet and physical realm in which we are standing.

The other is "world" as the "worldly" system of sinister human manipulations and values, which are opposed to the Christian.

Biblically, Christians are instructed always to cherish the former, as the good creation of God and His rightful property; but they are instructed to avoid the latter, as a realm of spiritually poisonous values and ideas.

But gnosticism and Neo-Platonism do not make this distinction. For them, the "world" is only the physical world (the "cave", or "flesh" ), and it is always bad, a realm of false appearances, bad values and spiritual incarceration. So they make a strict division between "spirit" and "world," and the latter is only evil.

What Roman Catholicism essentially did was to dissolve the distinction a different way. It embraced the poisonous world-system of values that was so active in Romanism, and employed the physical world as the playground of its empire-building. While it continued to talk about "the spiritual" as primary, it became political, earthly and collusionary with the power-brokers of the day. And this is manifest throughout its entire history, including the long period (up to Napoleon, in fact) when the right to assign "Roman emperorship" remained resident in papal authority. Only the pope could make subsequent secular rulers the official "Roman emperor" at any given time -- a power which the RC institution guarded jealously until Napoleon interrupted their pattern...a pattern never repudiated, and which, in theory, could even be resumed today.

When one wonders how the Catholics could have been complicit in the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, the wars of religion, the pogroms, or whatever, and not even have a single moral qualm about it, apparently, one will never find basis for that in Scripture or in the teaching of the Galilean Carpenter. But one has to look no further than the syncretistic move that dragged the name "Christianity" into Roman political affairs...to Constantine and the successors of the Roman Empire.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 3:10 pmIt's an extremely bizarre way to argue, to say that if Paul mentions (say) a gnostic concept and forbids people to adopt it, that therefore he's "influenced" by it, and must be pursuing its syncretistic inclusion in Christianity. It's the dead opposite of what is plainly true in the case. How does one expect to pull that off, since one is supplying the evidence of the defeat of one's own theory?

You're very puzzling, AJ...you're smart enough to get half way to a good point, but then, it seems, your longing to be thought authoritative takes over, and you can't seem to get free from your initial false hypothesis, because you don't want to be seen to be wrong in any way. If it were anybody else, I would say that it was a manifestation of a hubristic need to be seen by others to be right taking over from a reasonably able brain, and defeating the learning process. But I don't know you well enough to make such an assessment for sure.

Because you are invested in your zealotry, you have a very tough time to see things through nuanced lenses. A few posts back you seemed to have (over-) reacted to my polite use of the term zealot. You thought I was using it in an underhanded way and reacted to it. But no. You are obviously a zealot, a Christian zealot, and such zealotry derives from Hebrew zealotry.

Wiki:

Zealot, member of a Jewish sect noted for its uncompromising opposition to pagan Rome and the polytheism it professed. The Zealots were an aggressive political party whose concern for the national and religious life of the Jewish people led them to despise even Jews who sought peace and conciliation with the Roman authorities. A census of Galilee ordered by Rome in AD 6 spurred the Zealots to rally the populace to noncompliance on the grounds that agreement was an implicit acknowledgment by Jews of the right of pagans to rule their nation.

Extremists among the Zealots turned to terrorism and assassination and became known as Sicarii (Greek sikarioi, “dagger men”). They frequented public places with hidden daggers to strike down persons friendly to Rome. In the first revolt against Rome (AD 66–70) the Zealots played a leading role, and at Masada in 73 they committed suicide rather than surrender the fortress, but they were still a force to be reckoned with in the first part of the following century. A few scholars see a possible relationship between the Zealots and the Jewish religious community mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls. See also Masada.

Jewish Encyclopedia:

Zealous defenders of the Law and of the national life of the Jewish people; name of a party opposing with relentless rigor any attempt to bring Judea under the dominion of idolatrous Rome, and especially of the aggressive and fanatical war party from the time of Herod until the fall of Jerusalem and Masada. The members of this party bore also the name Sicarii, from their custom of going about with daggers ("sicæ") hidden beneath their cloaks, with which they would stab any one found committing a sacrilegious act or anything provoking anti-Jewish feeling.

It does not matter much what Paul *had in mind*. The processes of blending of world-concept systems occur at a non-rational level. The ideas that were afloat in the first century *confusion of peoples* would have been broadcasted and absorbed not through direct study, but through osmosis processes.

Your zealous outlook inhibits you from seeing what I am pointing out which is so very simple and so very obvious.

You're very puzzling, AJ...you're smart enough to get half way to a good point, but then, it seems, your longing to be thought authoritative takes over, and you can't seem to get free from your initial false hypothesis, because you don't want to be seen to be wrong in any way.

Incorrect. I am not trying to be *right in every way* since the topics we discuss are so complex and so difficult. I only have to be right to a degree or in some percentage.

The point I made stands. It is a sound point. There is nothing controversial in it. The problem is the problem that you have, for ideological reasons. I explained to you that I accept the way that you are. I try to make use of everything and I can make use of your fixity as well.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 3:45 pm Gee, harbal, it's almost like you're sayin' we have no right to disagree with misguided fools,

No, I'm not saying that, I'm just saying it seems pointless for you to argue that your nutty ideas are somehow better than anyone else's nutty ideas. Once you start believing in God, or gods, and invent some sort of system to go with it, you are living in fantassy land, and it is ridiculous to expect anyone to abandon their own fantassy in favour of yours.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 4:02 pm ...you seemed to have (over-) reacted to my polite use of the term zealot.

And you overreacted to my parallel allegation, then. It follows.

Too funny. Nope, AJ, that horse just ain't gonna sell. But I do admire your tenacity in continuing to try to posture as "fair" and "open-minded" in floating it. Nice touch of condescention...it goes well with the evinced hurt feelings and suggestion of having been aggrieved. You poor fella: nobody understands you...and you're so "polite" and nice, too.

I think you'd make a wonderful salesmen for derelict used cars, because apparently the quality of what you're having to sell has no deterent effect on you at all.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 3:58 pm Right. And to a complete violation of the authorization of Jesus Christ, who said, "My kingdom is not of this world." (John 18:36) The Romanish world went on a furious project of empire building, the detriment of the reputation of Christianity and in defiance of the explicit teaching of Messiah.

I am very glad that we are getting this settled, Brother Immanuel. It is important. I have no other objective here than to point out that within Gospel Christianity there is a conflict between a this-world focus and an after-world focus. This is not a controversial assertion. And bt saying it I am not advocating either the one or the other.

Put very simply, it is possible for a given person, the sole individual, to choose not to *live in this world* and not to construct in it -- raise children, educate them, create culture and everything else.

It is not possible to construct a civilization of people, and a culture, living out of this ethic.

So, a compromise must be made. There is no way around it.

I do not have much disagreement with you about the 'secularization' of the Christian impetus. (Hello Brother Dubes, you cool now?) I note it, I accept it.

To say My Kingdom is not of this world is distinct from saying My kingdom is not in this world.

Here is a quotation that has been taken to contradict the world-rejection admonition which you seem invested in:

“Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Col. 1: 12, 13).

Now, I do not wish to debate this conflict with you. I accept that you have your view and I can respect that. I am not so much concerned for the doctrinal purity as I am with understanding how things actually happened.

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 4:10 pm No, I'm not saying that, I'm just saying it seems pointless for you to argue that your nutty ideas are somehow better than anyone else's nutty ideas.

In certain senses I think I agree with this. When one gets into it with ideologically- and theologically-driven people the battles can get really weird.

But we have to sort through these things in order to get to the essence: it is not about the Story or the Picture, it is about the ideas that are expressed in them. We have to transcend the Picture for the understanding that operates, in us, on a different level.

However, we then have to get clear about the ideas and the admonitions (ethics) that are expressed both by Story and by refined theological exposition.

Master Alexis has always -- always! -- be ready to help. But dammit the clay is so hard to mold here! You need hands and arms like a vice!

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 4:28 pm ...within Gospel Christianity there is a conflict between a this-world focus and an after-world focus.

None at all, in fact. But there is a definite opposition between the good, created world, and the "world" of poisonous human politics: a distinction the RC hierarchy simply failed to make.

Put very simply, it is possible for a given person, the sole individual, to choose not to *live in this world* and not to construct in it -- raise children, educate them, create culture and everything else.

It actually isn't possible at all. One has to live within the physical world, and God has intended that we all should. But one is equally told not to be "worldly" or to make this world and its values ultimate.

To say My Kingdom is not of this world is distinct from saying My kingdom is not in this world.

That's incorrect, as manifested by the context. Jesus says that if his kingdom were ever "of this world" then his "followers would be fighting." But they were not. They were not trying to establish any empire, far less a Roman one. Which is why Jesus said, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and render unto God the things that are God's." (Matthew 22) The thing that was Caesar's was the tax money, which had his "likeness and impression" on it. The thing that bears the "likeness and impression" of God, is man. (Gen. 1:27) What he's saying is that we do not owe God to make Him an earthly kingdom, but to give ourselves entirely to God. On earth, Caesar remains Caesar so long as God allows. God makes His own kingdom, and does not need our interventions to do it.

Here is a quotation that has been taken to contradict the world-rejection admonition which you seem invested in:

“Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Col. 1: 12, 13).

This actually underlines my point. Paul's talking to ordinary Christians, not crazed RC militants here. He's saying that God "has made us" (i.e. already) what we ought to be, and that He has "translated us into" His kingdom. It's already done. It's not something for popes and their military associates to bring about. God's done it.

Now, I do not wish to debate this conflict with you. I accept that you have your view and I can respect that. I am not so much concerned for the doctrinal purity as I am with understanding how things actually happened.

But this is the debate. So it cannot be avoided. Did Constantine and his successors do the right thing? NO. They violated all the teaching of Scripture in doing it: and we see all the bad fruits of their decision so clearly laid out in the sordid history of the organization they created out of syncretism with Roman paganism.

"Doctrinal purity" was the issue from the very start. One cannot avoid discussing it, without denying oneself the right means for analyzing the problem.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 4:35 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 4:10 pm No, I'm not saying that, I'm just saying it seems pointless for you to argue that your nutty ideas are somehow better than anyone else's nutty ideas.

In certain senses I think I agree with this.

Dubious wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 6:05 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 3:58 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 3:39 pm
If I read Brother Dubious correctly, and I suspect that I did, I believe that what he meant to say is that when Cristianity-Catholicism became the state religion -- and it very certainly did and operated as such for centuries -- that it necessarily became a state religious enterprise, veering away, let's say, from world-renunciation to world-development and structural consolidation.

Right. And to a complete violation of the authorization of Jesus Christ, who said, "My kingdom is not of this world." (John 18:36) The Romanish world went on a furious project of empire building, the detriment of the reputation of Christianity and in defiance of the explicit teaching of Messiah.

Yes but you accept only the biblical view not the actual historical one in spite of you perennially claiming there's no difference. Again, the reason you have the bible in the form it's in and which you implicitly accept as god-given was itself a product of Romanization in the consolidation of past gospels, etc.; in short, a later contrivance to create a governing protocol of belief. If it weren't for that you wouldn't even have the bible, certainly not in its current form.

Also, if it went according to the explicit teaching of the Messiah, Christianity, which is Paul's creation, intentional or not, wouldn't have existed except perhaps as a heterodox form of Judaism. Jesus wasn't exactly an ecumenical thinker but one who accepted only Jews in his circle.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 1:02 pm Well, the lunatics have been quite active I see. Blessed are the lunatics for they shall overrun everything!

Better to be a lunatic than a master.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sun Jun 18, 2023 2:25 pm As I say: we spoon feed infants, not adults. Can't be any plainer than than, infant.

Note to others:

Be honest. Given the gap between the points I make above and henry's utterly substanceless "retort", should he or should he not be rather embarrassed right about now?

See, from my frame of mind, here is the tricky thing about henry's God:

"What did Deists believe about humans?

Deists insisted that religious truth should be subject to the authority of human reason rather than divine revelation. Consequently, they denied that the Bible was the revealed word of God and rejected scripture as a source of religious doctrine."

"For Deists God was a benevolent, if distant, creator whose revelation was nature and human reason. Applying reason to nature taught most Deists that God organized the world to promote human happiness and our greatest religious duty was to further that end by the practice of morality." national humanities center

So there is this distant God creating Nature and human beings. And human morality seems to revolve around the capacity to apply our God-given Reason to "conflicting goods".

So, "in his head", henry the Deist applies his God-given mind to "life, liberty, and property" in particular. And it doesn't matter whether the moral conflagration revolves around abortion or guns or human sexuality, only his own arrogant understanding of what those things are ever counts in any discussion with anyone.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 2:30 am iam,

Your wedge-drivin' didn't work. This (old, hackneyed) strategy (of yours) won't work either.

I'm just trying to give IC an opportunity to save his soul.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sun Jun 18, 2023 2:25 pm It's not complicated.

'As I've said across multiple threads (including this one, as I recall), man, any man, every man, any where or when, has an intuitive understanding that his life, liberty, and property are his and his alone. In a world overflowing with differing cultures and conflicts, differing environments and adaptive tricks for surviving them, this simple intuitive understanding stands coherently when all mores and laws rise and fall away.

See, there he goes again. Mr. Wiggle. He's not really responding to this...

Your God left no Scripture. No Divine Revelations. But when he gave mere mortals access to Reason, what did He have in mind? That in fact in regard to abortion, guns and human sexuality, Deists could arrive at the optimal rational assessment of them as moral issues? Meaning that all Deists should be more rather than less in sync about them? Or, instead, that different Deists living entirely different lives might come to entirely different and conflicting conclusions. Entirely different moral convictions?

Deism...and dasein?

...at all.

He's simply insisting [as always] that the manner in which he intuits the meaning of "life, liberty and property" transcends/surpasses all of the other historical, cultural and individual takes that are at odds with his own. Just as many of these...

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

...folks might argue in turn. Only to them, it's not just me but henry himself who gets them wrong.

Moral objectivism in a nutshell!

Why though? Because the Deist God assigned him as the one mere mortal who truly does grasp the nature of "life, liberty and property" rationally?

Then this preposterous assertion:

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sun Jun 18, 2023 2:25 pm If this intuitive understanding were simply a kind of survival trait then one would expect, over the long haul, it would have been bred out of at least some populations. It never has been. Even in societies founded on deference to authority, men still take offense at being used as property. *The consistency of this intuitive understanding, even as attempts are made to squelch it, to mebbe breed it out of mankind, has a lot to do with my being a deist. I didn't, as one dumb sob, asserts over and over, 'take a leap of faith'. I deduced from available fact.'

Even though down through the ages and around the globe culturally there have been any number of very, very different moral, political, anthropological, religious, etc., assessments of what life, liberty and property meant within any particular community, only his own God-given intuitive assessment counts.

...henry the Deist applies his God-given mind to "life, liberty, and property" in particular. And it doesn't matter whether the moral conflagration revolves around abortion or guns or human sexuality, only his own arrogant understanding of what those things are ever counts in any discussion with anyone.

Then back up onto his very own general description intuitive contraption cloud to merely repeat yet again...

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sun Jun 18, 2023 2:25 pm No. I recognize, as you (admit it or not) do, what is apparent: every man, any man, any where or when, has a natural, inalienable, and -- yes -- God-given -- right to his, and no other's, life, liberty, and property.

Then his own subjective, rooted existentially in dasein moral and political prejudices, heralded instead as his own arrogant, authoritarian God-given intuitively rational and/or rationally intuitive axioms:

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sun Jun 18, 2023 2:25 pm Abortion is killing a person. Most of the time it's also flat out murder. The chick you knocked up, 'Mary', had no claim on the person she knowingly, willingly, brought into the world. She had a responsibility to him. Instead, she murdered him for convenience sake. You aided and abetted her in an unjust killing. Oh, sure, you raised some token protest, 'John', but -- in the end -- you didn't defend your child.

Guns are property. If you do no wrong, then no one has a right to take your revolver. You're not obligated to own property, or to keep it. But, if you've deprived no soul of life, liberty, or property: your property is no body's else business. Their fear of what you may do with it obligates you to nuthin' and morally empowers them to the sum of zero. It's innocent till proven guilty, not guilty till proven innocent. And, the State, as it looks to leash you, has no claim your revolver, your freedom, or 'you'. Give yourself over to the State's agents as you choose. But remember, as you climb aboard the boxcar, you chose it.

Sexuality, in all its myriad forms ain't no body's business (so, keep it that way and no one will have cause to come down you for wearing a sports bra under your three-piece or tradin' in your junk for a gaping wound you call your vagina). Incidentally: was it the horror of lettin' your own kid get butchered in-womb that drove you to the transvestite fetish?

And yet even for other Deists out there who in being either intuitively rational or rationally intuitive come to very different assessments than his, well, they simply don't grasp that the Deist God imparted to henry quirk the only truly correct manner in which to grasp the meaning of life, liberty and property.




Here's the thing though....

Until IC is able to convince henry to watch those 16 or 17 YouTube videos, he is still going to burn in Hell for all of eternity.

Or whatever that even means in regard to the human "soul"?