Christianity

[Belinda]

Thank you for your advice. If truth were merely about showing some utility to modern, secular civilization, it might work…at least from a strategic perspective. But truth is not like that. Truth is just true, regardless of utility concerns. We either believe it, or wreck ourselves on the iron hide of reality. Truth always wins. One doesn’t have to figure out ways to make it appealing to people who are utilitarian in orientation. They, like everybody else, will discover that truth does not beg favours of the skeptics.

But modern secular civilisation is what we have.

It’s what you think you have. It’s not all we have, not all we ever had, and not all we will have.

We no longer have unquestioning faith .

Who is this marvellous “we” that once had faith that was without questioning? “We” were certainly not alive in Job’s day…and that is the oldest book in the Bible, we think.

To rail against modernity wastes your talent for Scripture.

I neither rail nor am against modernity (or postmodernity, for that matter). I am for truth, and against any conception of the present world that regards itself as ultimate. It’s all too easy for “modern” people to forget that they have been surpassed already, and that the present “postmodern” world will likewise eventually prove its lack of ultimacy.

Literal interpretation of The Bible no longer is a way to truth.

It depends on what one means by “literal interpretation.” If one means “being a philistine, and failing to recognize poetry, metaphor, parable and so on, then I hesitate to point out to you that hardly anybody has ever been a “literalist” of that kind. But if you mean “believing what God affirms,” then I must plead guilty as charged.

The whole truth includes the modern worldview.

The postmodernists of today will be devastated by your dismissal of them. They are convinced the so-called “modern” perspective was desperately flawed. And I think they had many good reasons to suppose so. Perhaps a little reading of their critiques would be salutary.

i respect your faithfulness to Truth however your literal interpretation of The Bible is not Truth, but superstition.

You “respect” what you simultaneously assert is my misguided “faithfulness” to a perspective you believe to be errant? It’s hard to say why you’d do that, if that’s what you’re doing.

We shall see, then, if the “faithfulness” of my “literal interpretation,” as you style it, or your dismissal of the affirmations of God, if such is your intention, will stand. Time will reveal it. We need not trouble ourselves on that score. God always wins. Always.

One would like to believe that Goodness, Truth, and Beauty always win. You are an optimist.

[Immanuel Can]

But modern secular civilisation is what we have.

It’s what you think you have. It’s not all we have, not all we ever had, and not all we will have.

We no longer have unquestioning faith .

Who is this marvellous “we” that once had faith that was without questioning? “We” were certainly not alive in Job’s day…and that is the oldest book in the Bible, we think.

To rail against modernity wastes your talent for Scripture.

I neither rail nor am against modernity (or postmodernity, for that matter). I am for truth, and against any conception of the present world that regards itself as ultimate. It’s all too easy for “modern” people to forget that they have been surpassed already, and that the present “postmodern” world will likewise eventually prove its lack of ultimacy.

Literal interpretation of The Bible no longer is a way to truth.

It depends on what one means by “literal interpretation.” If one means “being a philistine, and failing to recognize poetry, metaphor, parable and so on, then I hesitate to point out to you that hardly anybody has ever been a “literalist” of that kind. But if you mean “believing what God affirms,” then I must plead guilty as charged.

The whole truth includes the modern worldview.

The postmodernists of today will be devastated by your dismissal of them. They are convinced the so-called “modern” perspective was desperately flawed. And I think they had many good reasons to suppose so. Perhaps a little reading of their critiques would be salutary.

i respect your faithfulness to Truth however your literal interpretation of The Bible is not Truth, but superstition.

You “respect” what you simultaneously assert is my misguided “faithfulness” to a perspective you believe to be errant? It’s hard to say why you’d do that, if that’s what you’re doing.

We shall see, then, if the “faithfulness” of my “literal interpretation,” as you style it, or your dismissal of the affirmations of God, if such is your intention, will stand. Time will reveal it. We need not trouble ourselves on that score. God always wins. Always.

I do agree that world views are ephemeral. Can you not see that your own version of truth is historical?

That question doesn’t actually have any meaning. Every “truth” is “historical”; that’s not to say it’s untrue. You must be trying to say something more specific, but I can’t tell what it is.

Truth, Beauty, and Good don't necessarily win over evil.

Today they don’t. But a tomorrow is coming.

It's useless to look to any supernatural spirit to protect us from Trump, Putin, Hitler, Stalin, Netanyahu, and others who follow the dictum might is right.

“Might is right,” as Nietzsche pointed out, is all one CAN reasonably believe, once you remove God from your thinking. The very worldview you’re trying to defend is the one that inevitably yields that result.

But “might” and “right” are not the same. And tomorrow, we’ll find that out.

Love of truth is a way of living, not love of an actual being. Jesus said he was the way, the truth, and the life : a synthesis , not pure Truth.

What’s the incentive for “love of truth” in a world in which only power has a say? You think you can escape that, but you cannot. Having abandoned God, one is left with nothing but the ability of the strongest to tyrannize the weaker…a kind of “nature red in tooth and claw” taken over to human affairs. And “right” and “wrong” themselves no longer have meaning, because there’s nothing to MAKE anything “right” or “wrong.” There is only, “I have the power, and I will do as I will.” And that’s the end of it.

The claim of Jesus, “I am the way, the truth and the life” is not some sort of synthetic abstraction. It’s a clear declaration that without Him, you will never get to God. As He adds (and you forgot to quote) “No one comes to [God] the Father except through Me.” (NIV) Not only is He not saying He’s an abstraction or amalgam of ideas; He’s saying, unless you come to Me first, you’ll never come to God.

Take that to the bank, Belinda. He said it, He meant it, and some coming tomorrow, you’ll know the truth of it, one way or the other. My preference is that by that time, you’re on the right side of what Jesus Christ promised.

[promethean75]

You could even just say and do christian stuff while maintaining your skepticism of the religion, and J will probably still let you in. He's not gonna blame you for being doubtful of em 'cause he'd be doubtful of himself too if he lived two thousand years after he died and there's just a few mentions of him in a book. That hardly constitutes any proof, especially for the wild claims set forth in the book.

J's not a hypocrite, so you're good. Just do the christian stuff 'cause you like it... not because some dude from a book told you to do it and threatens you if you don't.

I mean, that's what J was, won't he? A rebel iconoclast, destroyer of competing lunatics with similar messianic complexes. So, to be a follower of J, you have to destroy em, B! You have to cut him down and take his place. Now take the blade and may your aim be true!

And didn't you once say "ew baby do you know what that's worth? Ew heaven is a place on earth"?

[Belinda]

It’s what you think you have. It’s not all we have, not all we ever had, and not all we will have.


Who is this marvellous “we” that once had faith that was without questioning? “We” were certainly not alive in Job’s day…and that is the oldest book in the Bible, we think.


I neither rail nor am against modernity (or postmodernity, for that matter). I am for truth, and against any conception of the present world that regards itself as ultimate. It’s all too easy for “modern” people to forget that they have been surpassed already, and that the present “postmodern” world will likewise eventually prove its lack of ultimacy.


It depends on what one means by “literal interpretation.” If one means “being a philistine, and failing to recognize poetry, metaphor, parable and so on, then I hesitate to point out to you that hardly anybody has ever been a “literalist” of that kind. But if you mean “believing what God affirms,” then I must plead guilty as charged.


The postmodernists of today will be devastated by your dismissal of them. They are convinced the so-called “modern” perspective was desperately flawed. And I think they had many good reasons to suppose so. Perhaps a little reading of their critiques would be salutary.

You “respect” what you simultaneously assert is my misguided “faithfulness” to a perspective you believe to be errant? It’s hard to say why you’d do that, if that’s what you’re doing.

We shall see, then, if the “faithfulness” of my “literal interpretation,” as you style it, or your dismissal of the affirmations of God, if such is your intention, will stand. Time will reveal it. We need not trouble ourselves on that score. God always wins. Always.

I do agree that world views are ephemeral. Can you not see that your own version of truth is historical?

That question doesn’t actually have any meaning. Every “truth” is “historical”; that’s not to say it’s untrue. You must be trying to say something more specific, but I can’t tell what it is.

Truth, Beauty, and Good don't necessarily win over evil.

Today they don’t. But a tomorrow is coming.

It's useless to look to any supernatural spirit to protect us from Trump, Putin, Hitler, Stalin, Netanyahu, and others who follow the dictum might is right.

“Might is right,” as Nietzsche pointed out, is all one CAN reasonably believe, once you remove God from your thinking. The very worldview you’re trying to defend is the one that inevitably yields that result.

But “might” and “right” are not the same. And tomorrow, we’ll find that out.

Love of truth is a way of living, not love of an actual being. Jesus said he was the way, the truth, and the life : a synthesis , not pure Truth.

What’s the incentive for “love of truth” in a world in which only power has a say? You think you can escape that, but you cannot. Having abandoned God, one is left with nothing but the ability of the strongest to tyrannize the weaker…a kind of “nature red in tooth and claw” taken over to human affairs. And “right” and “wrong” themselves no longer have meaning, because there’s nothing to MAKE anything “right” or “wrong.” There is only, “I have the power, and I will do as I will.” And that’s the end of it.

The claim of Jesus, “I am the way, the truth and the life” is not some sort of synthetic abstraction. It’s a clear declaration that without Him, you will never get to God. As He adds (and you forgot to quote) “No one comes to [God] the Father except through Me.” (NIV) Not only is He not saying He’s an abstraction or amalgam of ideas; He’s saying, unless you come to Me first, you’ll never come to God.

Take that to the bank, Belinda. He said it, He meant it, and some coming tomorrow, you’ll know the truth of it, one way or the other. My preference is that by that time, you’re on the right side of what Jesus Christ promised.

Having abandoned God there remains one guiding star which is human nature compounded as it is of good and bad. Our history is terrible however I do trust in hope for better. The Way, The Truth and The life as propounded and existentially lived by Jesus was aimed at fellow Jews a people suffering under brutal Roman occupation. Jesus truly is iconic goodness but Jesus is not the only true icon of goodness: there are also Socrates and Buddha.

To be a practical proposition a religion has to speak to the people who are to be converted. Some people will respond to Socrates, or Buddha, far more so than to Jesus. Even modern paganism is better than no religion at all, or the philosophy that might is right.

Would you yourself care to provide a set of rules that enable us to differentiate between a harmful cult on the one hand a life -supporting religion on the other?

[Immanuel Can]

I do agree that world views are ephemeral. Can you not see that your own version of truth is historical?

That question doesn’t actually have any meaning. Every “truth” is “historical”; that’s not to say it’s untrue. You must be trying to say something more specific, but I can’t tell what it is.

Truth, Beauty, and Good don't necessarily win over evil.

Today they don’t. But a tomorrow is coming.

It's useless to look to any supernatural spirit to protect us from Trump, Putin, Hitler, Stalin, Netanyahu, and others who follow the dictum might is right.

“Might is right,” as Nietzsche pointed out, is all one CAN reasonably believe, once you remove God from your thinking. The very worldview you’re trying to defend is the one that inevitably yields that result.

But “might” and “right” are not the same. And tomorrow, we’ll find that out.

Love of truth is a way of living, not love of an actual being. Jesus said he was the way, the truth, and the life : a synthesis , not pure Truth.

What’s the incentive for “love of truth” in a world in which only power has a say? You think you can escape that, but you cannot. Having abandoned God, one is left with nothing but the ability of the strongest to tyrannize the weaker…a kind of “nature red in tooth and claw” taken over to human affairs. And “right” and “wrong” themselves no longer have meaning, because there’s nothing to MAKE anything “right” or “wrong.” There is only, “I have the power, and I will do as I will.” And that’s the end of it.

The claim of Jesus, “I am the way, the truth and the life” is not some sort of synthetic abstraction. It’s a clear declaration that without Him, you will never get to God. As He adds (and you forgot to quote) “No one comes to [God] the Father except through Me.” (NIV) Not only is He not saying He’s an abstraction or amalgam of ideas; He’s saying, unless you come to Me first, you’ll never come to God.

Take that to the bank, Belinda. He said it, He meant it, and some coming tomorrow, you’ll know the truth of it, one way or the other. My preference is that by that time, you’re on the right side of what Jesus Christ promised.

Having abandoned God there remains one guiding star which is human nature compounded as it is of good and bad.

The problem is that there is then no objectively-real “good” or “bad.” Our “human nature” is just whatever Nature made it to be; no more, no less, no other than that. One has no longer any objective basis to deplore or laud, to praise or blame, our actions.

Our history is terrible however I do trust in hope for better.

You can’t call our history objectively “terrible.” All you can say is “Belinda would not have preferred the way it was.” You’ve killed off the only basis for identifying history as good or bad. So your view of history would have to be, if you were frank with yourself, that it just was what it was, and will be what it will be. There is no “terrible,” and there is no “hope.” There is only, perhaps, your wish that you might like the future more than you liked the past — but your grounds for hoping it will be so are none at all, given what it has already been, and given what Nature can do for you in the future.

How can you be happy with that?

The Way, The Truth and The life as propounded and existentially lived by Jesus was aimed at fellow Jews a people suffering under brutal Roman occupation. Jesus truly is iconic goodness but Jesus is not the only true icon of goodness: there are also Socrates and Buddha.

You’re mistaking “nice” for “good.” Socrates was a “nice” man, perhaps; he was never good in the way you know Jesus Christ is. And Buddha might not have been genuinely good at all, depending on your view of fatalism.

But why do you say that Jesus is “iconic goodness”? He, Himself asked the same question when interrogated by the Rich Young Ruler: “Why do you call Me good; there is none good but God alone?” Jesus is, of course, not denying HIs own deity, but rather pointing out the implications of what the RYR was calling Him. So let me ask you: why do you call Jesus “good,” when you don’t regard HIm as God? Are you taking the glory of God, and attributing it to somebody you think was just a man, not the Son of God?

To be a practical proposition a religion has to speak to the people who are to be converted. Some people will respond to Socrates, or Buddha, far more so than to Jesus. Even modern paganism is better than no religion at all, or the philosophy that might is right.

Yes, some people will respond to Socrates or Buddha. But neither can save them. They were not God, nor even claimed to be. And paganism never saved anybody. And likewise, some people will respond to Satanism, or Nazism, or the Nietzschean nihilistic view that puts power at the head of all things. But so what? What does that prove? Only that men can be badly, badly lost. It does not imply that because they choose something, that thing is good…far less, capable of saving them from their natures.

Would you yourself care to provide a set of rules that enable us to differentiate between a harmful cult on the one hand a life -supporting religion on the other?

You already did supply it: Jesus said, “I am THE way, THE truth, and THE life; no man comes to the Father except through Me.”

There’s the test: if they have Christ as the source of Salvation, they can bring you to God; if they do not, they cannot. They are not the way, not the truth, and not the paths to life.

And the One who provided that test is, by both your admission and mine, the very embodiment of “good.” So trust Him, if you quote Him. For it is one thing to admire, but quite another to believe and be saved.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Who are these doubters? I have no doubt, except of the feelings associated with my memories. Of the truth of them. The feelings that warp Dasein, in my hall of distorted mirrors. I can have no doubt in nature's full explanatory power.

[Gary Childress]

That question doesn’t actually have any meaning. Every “truth” is “historical”; that’s not to say it’s untrue. You must be trying to say something more specific, but I can’t tell what it is.


Today they don’t. But a tomorrow is coming.

“Might is right,” as Nietzsche pointed out, is all one CAN reasonably believe, once you remove God from your thinking. The very worldview you’re trying to defend is the one that inevitably yields that result.

But “might” and “right” are not the same. And tomorrow, we’ll find that out.

What’s the incentive for “love of truth” in a world in which only power has a say? You think you can escape that, but you cannot. Having abandoned God, one is left with nothing but the ability of the strongest to tyrannize the weaker…a kind of “nature red in tooth and claw” taken over to human affairs. And “right” and “wrong” themselves no longer have meaning, because there’s nothing to MAKE anything “right” or “wrong.” There is only, “I have the power, and I will do as I will.” And that’s the end of it.

The claim of Jesus, “I am the way, the truth and the life” is not some sort of synthetic abstraction. It’s a clear declaration that without Him, you will never get to God. As He adds (and you forgot to quote) “No one comes to [God] the Father except through Me.” (NIV) Not only is He not saying He’s an abstraction or amalgam of ideas; He’s saying, unless you come to Me first, you’ll never come to God.

Take that to the bank, Belinda. He said it, He meant it, and some coming tomorrow, you’ll know the truth of it, one way or the other. My preference is that by that time, you’re on the right side of what Jesus Christ promised.

Having abandoned God there remains one guiding star which is human nature compounded as it is of good and bad.

The problem is that there is then no objectively-real “good” or “bad.” Our “human nature” is just whatever Nature made it to be; no more, no less, no other than that. One has no longer any objective basis to deplore or laud, to praise or blame, our actions.

A person can always say, "I would not want that done to me." Now, whether someone else honors that statement and doesn't do something to us that we would not want done to us is another matter, and one that can only be resolved by courts and juries. But it is something that can be resolved in reality. Morality doesn't magically disappear because there is no God. As long as there are human beings there is morality. Without a God just means that there is no perfect morality or perfect justice. It does not mean that morality doesn't exist.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Having abandoned God there remains one guiding star which is human nature compounded as it is of good and bad.

The problem is that there is then no objectively-real “good” or “bad.” Our “human nature” is just whatever Nature made it to be; no more, no less, no other than that. One has no longer any objective basis to deplore or laud, to praise or blame, our actions.

A person can always say, "I would not want that done to me." Now, whether someone else honors that statement and doesn't do something to us that we would not want done to us is another matter, and one that can only be resolved by courts and juries. But it is something that can be resolved in reality. Morality doesn't magically disappear because there is no God. As long as there are human beings there is morality. Without a God just means that there is no perfect morality or perfect justice. It does not mean that morality doesn't exist.

Do as you would be done by is the natural ethos of all higher animals. It works. That's all that's necessary. Not meaningless absoluteness. Further, religion makes people less moral than it makes them moral, and perpetuates social injustice.

PS. All God idea influenced morality is deeply flawed, misanthropic, evil. Natural morality, pre-wired for experience, for ongoing civilization, has been superior since the Enlightenment, and before, in stoicism.

[iambiguous]

Yes, some people will respond to Socrates or Buddha. But neither can save them. They were not God, nor even claimed to be. And paganism never saved anybody. And likewise, some people will respond to Satanism, or Nazism, or the Nietzschean nihilistic view that puts power at the head of all things. But so what? What does that prove? Only that men can be badly, badly lost. It does not imply that because they choose something, that thing is good…far less, capable of saving them from their natures.

There he goes again!

He makes it unequivocally clear that if you want to be saved -- attaining both immortality and salvation -- it's the Christian God...or else!

But what sets him apart from those Christians who embody a leap of faith or a wager or fall back on "...because it says so in the Bible", is that he is adamant: substantive historical and scientific evidence is there able to establish the existence of the Christian God residing in Heaven as readily is establishing that the Pope resides in the Vatican.

Just don't ever ask him to explore that evidence with you.

Hell, I can't even get him to explore this with others. Or get him to simply note the segments of the WLC/RF videos that were most powerful in persuading him of this.

Just out of curiosity, was Christianity around when Socrates and Buddha were around? If not, did both of them go to Hell having never accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior? Or do all men, women and children get a "get out of Hell free card" if they go to the grave utterly ignorant regarding the God of Abraham.

And what of Maia and all the Pagans among us?

Doomed forever and ever and ever and ever...?

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Yes, some people will respond to Socrates or Buddha. But neither can save them. They were not God, nor even claimed to be. And paganism never saved anybody. And likewise, some people will respond to Satanism, or Nazism, or the Nietzschean nihilistic view that puts power at the head of all things. But so what? What does that prove? Only that men can be badly, badly lost. It does not imply that because they choose something, that thing is good…far less, capable of saving them from their natures.

There he goes again!

He makes it unequivocally clear that if you want to be saved -- attaining both immortality and salvation -- it's the Christian God...or else!

But what sets him apart from those Christians who embody a leap of faith or a wager or fall back on "...because it says so in the Bible", is that he is adamant: substantive historical and scientific evidence is there able to establish the existence of the Christian God residing in Heaven as readily is establishing that the Pope resides in the Vatican.

Just don't ever ask him to explore that evidence with you.

Hell, I can't even get him to explore this with others. Or get him to simply note the segments of the WLC/RF videos that were most powerful in persuading him of this.

Just out of curiosity, was Christianity around when Socrates and Buddha were around? If not, did both of them go to Hell having never accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior? Or do all men, women and children get a "get out of Hell free card" if they go to the grave utterly ignorant regarding the God of Abraham.

And what of Maia and all the Pagans among us?

Doomed forever and ever and ever and ever...?

And IC's nature is as fallen, unsaved, unredeemed, depraved as any. Not only in his vile beliefs, but in his vile attitude: You can be a decent person, have a decent attitude, despite having vile, anagram evil, beliefs. He doesn't.

[Belinda]

That question doesn’t actually have any meaning. Every “truth” is “historical”; that’s not to say it’s untrue. You must be trying to say something more specific, but I can’t tell what it is.


Today they don’t. But a tomorrow is coming.

“Might is right,” as Nietzsche pointed out, is all one CAN reasonably believe, once you remove God from your thinking. The very worldview you’re trying to defend is the one that inevitably yields that result.

But “might” and “right” are not the same. And tomorrow, we’ll find that out.

What’s the incentive for “love of truth” in a world in which only power has a say? You think you can escape that, but you cannot. Having abandoned God, one is left with nothing but the ability of the strongest to tyrannize the weaker…a kind of “nature red in tooth and claw” taken over to human affairs. And “right” and “wrong” themselves no longer have meaning, because there’s nothing to MAKE anything “right” or “wrong.” There is only, “I have the power, and I will do as I will.” And that’s the end of it.

The claim of Jesus, “I am the way, the truth and the life” is not some sort of synthetic abstraction. It’s a clear declaration that without Him, you will never get to God. As He adds (and you forgot to quote) “No one comes to [God] the Father except through Me.” (NIV) Not only is He not saying He’s an abstraction or amalgam of ideas; He’s saying, unless you come to Me first, you’ll never come to God.

Take that to the bank, Belinda. He said it, He meant it, and some coming tomorrow, you’ll know the truth of it, one way or the other. My preference is that by that time, you’re on the right side of what Jesus Christ promised.

Having abandoned God there remains one guiding star which is human nature compounded as it is of good and bad.

The problem is that there is then no objectively-real “good” or “bad.” Our “human nature” is just whatever Nature made it to be; no more, no less, no other than that. One has no longer any objective basis to deplore or laud, to praise or blame, our actions.

Our history is terrible however I do trust in hope for better.

You can’t call our history objectively “terrible.” All you can say is “Belinda would not have preferred the way it was.” You’ve killed off the only basis for identifying history as good or bad. So your view of history would have to be, if you were frank with yourself, that it just was what it was, and will be what it will be. There is no “terrible,” and there is no “hope.” There is only, perhaps, your wish that you might like the future more than you liked the past — but your grounds for hoping it will be so are none at all, given what it has already been, and given what Nature can do for you in the future.

How can you be happy with that?

The Way, The Truth and The life as propounded and existentially lived by Jesus was aimed at fellow Jews a people suffering under brutal Roman occupation. Jesus truly is iconic goodness but Jesus is not the only true icon of goodness: there are also Socrates and Buddha.

You’re mistaking “nice” for “good.” Socrates was a “nice” man, perhaps; he was never good in the way you know Jesus Christ is. And Buddha might not have been genuinely good at all, depending on your view of fatalism.

But why do you say that Jesus is “iconic goodness”? He, Himself asked the same question when interrogated by the Rich Young Ruler: “Why do you call Me good; there is none good but God alone?” Jesus is, of course, not denying HIs own deity, but rather pointing out the implications of what the RYR was calling Him. So let me ask you: why do you call Jesus “good,” when you don’t regard HIm as God? Are you taking the glory of God, and attributing it to somebody you think was just a man, not the Son of God?

To be a practical proposition a religion has to speak to the people who are to be converted. Some people will respond to Socrates, or Buddha, far more so than to Jesus. Even modern paganism is better than no religion at all, or the philosophy that might is right.

Yes, some people will respond to Socrates or Buddha. But neither can save them. They were not God, nor even claimed to be. And paganism never saved anybody. And likewise, some people will respond to Satanism, or Nazism, or the Nietzschean nihilistic view that puts power at the head of all things. But so what? What does that prove? Only that men can be badly, badly lost. It does not imply that because they choose something, that thing is good…far less, capable of saving them from their natures.

Would you yourself care to provide a set of rules that enable us to differentiate between a harmful cult on the one hand a life -supporting religion on the other?

You already did supply it: Jesus said, “I am THE way, THE truth, and THE life; no man comes to the Father except through Me.”

There’s the test: if they have Christ as the source of Salvation, they can bring you to God; if they do not, they cannot. They are not the way, not the truth, and not the paths to life.

And the One who provided that test is, by both your admission and mine, the very embodiment of “good.” So trust Him, if you quote Him. For it is one thing to admire, but quite another to believe and be saved.

Yes ,but Jesus said so in the context of Palestine under Roman occupation when Jews were struggling with how to be good Jews with the Romans in charge.
Jesus was not addressing people in July 2025.
Jesus Christ who is a Christian icon is the embodiment of Good for Christians today: the historical Jesus for first century Christians is the embodiment of how to be a good Jew.

Did you forget it was Paul who brought the Jewish sect of Christianity to the Gentiles? But for Paul, we'd not have had Christianity during the past two thousand years.

[Belinda]

The problem is that there is then no objectively-real “good” or “bad.” Our “human nature” is just whatever Nature made it to be; no more, no less, no other than that. One has no longer any objective basis to deplore or laud, to praise or blame, our actions.

A person can always say, "I would not want that done to me." Now, whether someone else honors that statement and doesn't do something to us that we would not want done to us is another matter, and one that can only be resolved by courts and juries. But it is something that can be resolved in reality. Morality doesn't magically disappear because there is no God. As long as there are human beings there is morality. Without a God just means that there is no perfect morality or perfect justice. It does not mean that morality doesn't exist.

Do as you would be done by is the natural ethos of all higher animals. It works. That's all that's necessary. Not meaningless absoluteness. Further, religion makes people less moral than it makes them moral, and perpetuates social injustice.

Absolutely Martin: The Golden Rule works! Well, may not for tyrannosaurus rex or fascists but you know what I mean.


Religion works as means of social control

[Martin Peter Clarke]

A person can always say, "I would not want that done to me." Now, whether someone else honors that statement and doesn't do something to us that we would not want done to us is another matter, and one that can only be resolved by courts and juries. But it is something that can be resolved in reality. Morality doesn't magically disappear because there is no God. As long as there are human beings there is morality. Without a God just means that there is no perfect morality or perfect justice. It does not mean that morality doesn't exist.

Do as you would be done by is the natural ethos of all higher animals. It works. That's all that's necessary. Not meaningless absoluteness. Further, religion makes people less moral than it makes them moral, and perpetuates social injustice.

Absolutely Martin: The Golden Rule works! Well, may not for tyrannosaurus rex or fascists but you know what I mean.

Religion works as means of social control

Aye Belinda. The Golden Rule is as deterministic as billiards, in-group. So it worked for T. rex and works for Fascists. Religion makes us put up with their shit.

PS I'm not happy with my billiards comparison. Billiards is mechanics, so is the Golden Rule, but of a higher order. It emerges in the evolution of social organisms. Including plants. The misanthropy, the darkness at the heart of death cult Christianity, epitomized by IC, is something else again. The child victim of the abusive parent, always blaming themselves.

We are pre-wired for the group moral foundations, in at least 80% of the population;

Loyalty/betrayal
Authority/subversion
Sanctity/degradation

(Liberty/oppression)

those top 3 play in to the hands of religion, the etymology of which is 80% re-reading, re-iterating sacred texts (Cicero) & 20% re-binding , re-connecting (Augustine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion# ... of_concept.

Religion makes us submit to the shit of Fascists.

[Belinda]

Do as you would be done by is the natural ethos of all higher animals. It works. That's all that's necessary. Not meaningless absoluteness. Further, religion makes people less moral than it makes them moral, and perpetuates social injustice.

Absolutely Martin: The Golden Rule works! Well, may not for tyrannosaurus rex or fascists but you know what I mean.

Religion works as means of social control

Aye Belinda. The Golden Rule is as deterministic as billiards, in-group. So it worked for T. rex and works for Fascists. Religion makes us put up with their shit.

PS I'm not happy with my billiards comparison. Billiards is mechanics, so is the Golden Rule, but of a higher order. It emerges in the evolution of social organisms. Including plants. The misanthropy, the darkness at the heart of death cult Christianity, epitomized by IC, is something else again.

Do you call Christianity a death cult because Xity promises a happy life only after death ? Or for some other reason? I can't see that Xity or Xians are misanthropic. Is it perhaps because Xian doctrine is that body is of less value than mind?

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Absolutely Martin: The Golden Rule works! Well, may not for tyrannosaurus rex or fascists but you know what I mean.

Religion works as means of social control

Aye Belinda. The Golden Rule is as deterministic as billiards, in-group. So it worked for T. rex and works for Fascists. Religion makes us put up with their shit.

PS I'm not happy with my billiards comparison. Billiards is mechanics, so is the Golden Rule, but of a higher order. It emerges in the evolution of social organisms. Including plants. The misanthropy, the darkness at the heart of death cult Christianity, epitomized by IC, is something else again.

Do you call Christianity a death cult because Xity promises a happy life only after death ? Or for some other reason? I can't see that Xity or Xians are misanthropic. Is it perhaps because Xian doctrine is that body is of less value than mind?

Jesus had to commit suicide by cop, die, for your deadly sins (that's pretty misanthropic, and deathly) to be forgiven only of you take that deal. It's human sacrifice, plain and simple. Required by God.