Re: Christianity
Posted: Sun Dec 26, 2021 2:17 pm
While you have presented questions that have question marks at the end, it seems to me that you are really making statements and challenging me to either agree or disagree. However, I do not see things in exact black and white terms. So it is not quite for me a yes/no issue.Lacewing wrote: ↑Sat Dec 25, 2021 2:25 am Okay, so, what are the kinds of things that people do when they lie about being associated with a one and only god that rejects all else/others?
1. They spread and perpetuate that distortion/deception.
2. They reject and condemn others.
3. They falsely claim that they are doing a god's work.
4. They falsely claim that their beliefs are true, and that all else is a lie.
5. They divide people and life into ideas 'of god' vs. 'not of god'.
6. They distort the young minds and naturally-beautiful-spirits of children with nonsense.
7. They slow the progress of humankind with their superstitions and stories.
Aren't such things destructive?
You open by making a statement, a declaration, which is consistent with your main argument (there is always something more and defining things is problematic and ill-advised). You make an assertion that it is a 'lie' to associate with one particular representation or conception of God ('god' as you wrote it) if the conception one has rejects or, I suppose, criticizes the others. You state that people *do* all sorts of things, bad things I gather, when they make these sorts of assumptions, decisions and value-judgments. And you list them.
What is the core issue here? And what is the core ideological assertion that you are making? My answer would be that it is imperative, and always necessary, to examine and make decisions about the relative value of things -- all things, in all situations. In fact I would say that this discrimination-process is the most important function and aspect of intelligence (intellectus). Your ideological assertion (as it seems to me) is one that seems to negate this weighing and analyzing requirement. If I were to adopt your view, which does seem to me to be an ideological assertion, I do not think I would be able to decide anything. I would be inhibited in making difficult decisions and distinctions. It would be difficult to establish and to *believe in* the hierarchies of value that exist in our world. But then I think you operate from the ideology that *valuation*, because it is human, and because it is *invented*, is unreal. But as an ideological statement what would I conclude if I really took your message to heart? What is its effect? What results from it? What is its consequence?
I think your focus needs to be examined. So in your bulleted list which I have numbered, I would answer:
1) You have decided that something is a distortion. And you have assigned that negative term. But hierarchies of valuation require a decisive mental and intellectual operation. Otherwise one abandons the field, so to speak, and cannot make any decisive decision. Nevertheless it is true that some definitions are, perhaps, too exclusive, too biased, so this is a real concern. But that does not mean that the process (the intellectual and the moral process of assigning value) can be abandoned. So I would suggest the opposite: one must engage even more strongly with the decisive endeavors.
2) There are obviously situations where *condemnation* is necessary and good. To condemn rituals that involve human (or perhaps animal) sacrifice is an example that we can examine when comparing it, say, to the ritual of old-school Catholic Mass. We will be compelled, morally and intellectually, to define one as *superior* to the other. So with this example we see clearly that discrimination, analysis and decisiveness cannot be abandoned but must be engaged with. However, to a degree your point is that you take issue with definitions that are too narrow. But this is an example of your own discriminating analysis in operation. I would have to be presented with the precise examples you hold to to be able to decide if I agree with your view of narrowness and condemnation.
Note that condemn involves the notion of damnum and thus of damnation. But the origin of the notion of damnation is in the assigning of a value to some actions over-against others. It is comparative. And you give evidence of the use of comparative intellect.[Middle English condemnen, from Old French condemner, from Latin condemnāre : com-, intensive pref.; see com- + damnāre, to sentence (from damnum, penalty).]
3) This is an interesting one. The way that I would defend the idea of 'doing a god's work' is to examine it through a Platonic lens. When we do the higher bidding of the soul we are, according to Platonist tenets, doing God's bidding. These are applied valuations to what is best for the soul. Plato works all of this out in his dialogues. And I would say there is really no way for any of us to carry our reasoning outside of the paradigm that Plato establishes.
And yet I must certainly agree with you that people do, indeed, seem to self-deceive when they do not have enough -- caution? circumspection? thoroughness? -- to really examine their ideas and choices.
I could I think move through the rest of your statements but the one that interests me is the one about 'naturally-beautiful-spirits of children with nonsense'. I do see the point you wish to make. It has to do with, I would gather, a 'natural innocence' and a 'natural way of being' that, you feel, can be and is contaminated and distorted by false and impartial assertions made by adults.
But the opposite observation could just as easily be made: paideia, in its best form, supports the human mind and 'feeds' it, gives it structures into which it can develop. It is a question of the quality, and the focus, of the *school* it seems to me.
Your point (I gather) is that a Christian school (or any religious school?) is distorting and confining to that child's natural way of being, and this is something that concerns you. Point taken. Yet it could of course be qualified.
Again, I see your point, but I am forced, intellectually, to admit that some answers are better and more complete, and thus more compelling and convincing, than others. And by saying this I admit to the discerning capability of intellectual processes. So I must propose that there are *ultimate answers* to specific question. If I say there is no answer I engage in a contradiction with is I think fallacious.Isn't it a 'difficult truth' to NOT have the ultimate answer? Wouldn't this be a difficult truth that theists try to avoid?
Good question. Not the mutable world, that much we do know. (The world of *becoming*). What is immutable and unchanging (the world of *being*) are metaphysical ideas that stand, or exist, behind any specific and local manifestation. These ideas are invisible and have to be discovered, as it were, through intellectual work. In one way or another, unless you abandon the ground entirely (into silence), into saying and asserting nothing) you will have no choice but to engage with metaphysical ideas -- ideas that preexist manifestation, that stand *behind* it.What is eternal and unchanging... truly?
[Note that when I use the pronound *you* I mean *all of us* and *we*.]
