Christianity

[Belinda]

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.

It's easier to understand the death of Socrates who also committed "suicide by cop". Both Jesus and Socrates were bloody nuisances to the authorities. Jesus and Socrates died rather than renounce their principles.

The human sacrifice element in the Doctrine of the Atonement is superstition. The ancient superstition of human sacrifice was overruled long before Jesus, by Abraham who substituted a lamb. No doubt Jesus knew about how human sacrifice was out of order. And Jesus was imitating the lamb substitute that Abraham sacrificed.
The practical implication of all this sacrificing business is that it's impossible for a well socialised person to go through life unscathed.

The rational way to understand the martyrdom of Jesus is to view it as a saving grace of human nature that humans can rise above their own selfish interests to sacrifice themselves for a cause. Other animals do so too. Elephants, whales, domestic dogs, apes, and so forth , mothers of all species where individuals' central nervous systems are well evolved.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

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.

It's easier to understand the death of Socrates who also committed "suicide by cop". Both Jesus and Socrates were bloody nuisances to the authorities. Jesus and Socrates died rather than renounce their principles.

The human sacrifice element in the Doctrine of the Atonement is superstition. The ancient superstition of human sacrifice was overruled long before Jesus, by Abraham who substituted a lamb. No doubt Jesus knew about how human sacrifice was out of order. And Jesus was imitating the lamb substitute that Abraham sacrificed.
The practical implication of all this sacrificing business is that it's impossible for a well socialised person to go through life unscathed.

The rational way to understand the martyrdom of Jesus is to view it as a saving grace of human nature that humans can rise above their own selfish interests to sacrifice themselves for a cause. Other animals do so too. Elephants, whales, domestic dogs, apes, and so forth , mothers of all species where individuals' central nervous systems are well evolved.

Which just shows how natural it all is. No real God, Love transcendent, would need or require any of it. They'd just leave a timeless anachronism.

[Belinda]

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.

It's easier to understand the death of Socrates who also committed "suicide by cop". Both Jesus and Socrates were bloody nuisances to the authorities. Jesus and Socrates died rather than renounce their principles.

The human sacrifice element in the Doctrine of the Atonement is superstition. The ancient superstition of human sacrifice was overruled long before Jesus, by Abraham who substituted a lamb. No doubt Jesus knew about how human sacrifice was out of order. And Jesus was imitating the lamb substitute that Abraham sacrificed.
The practical implication of all this sacrificing business is that it's impossible for a well socialised person to go through life unscathed.

The rational way to understand the martyrdom of Jesus is to view it as a saving grace of human nature that humans can rise above their own selfish interests to sacrifice themselves for a cause. Other animals do so too. Elephants, whales, domestic dogs, apes, and so forth , mothers of all species where individuals' central nervous systems are well evolved.

Which just shows how natural it all is. No real God, Love transcendent, would need or require any of it. They'd just leave a timeless anachronism.

But the history of ideas is not an anachronism. Jesus, and all us ex-Christians are inheritors of that particular myth. You would not be you, Martin sans ideas that you inherited if only to reject the ideas . Every Dasein has a cultural inheritance including |the historical Jesus, including you ,and me.

[Immanuel Can]

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.”

But so what? I would “want" a billion dollars, and nobody gives it to me. What does what I “want” get 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 wait: on what basis?

Even if you have a court, what justification does that court have to say, “Mr X., you did to Gary something Gary wouldn’t want. Thus, we are justified and just to sentence you to…”what? What is the justifiable penalty for failing to give somebody what he “wants,” or for doing to him something he “didn’t want done to him”?

Morality doesn't magically disappear because there is no God.

You’ve got it backwards. If there had been no God, morality would never have appeared in the first place. Now that we’ve "magically disappeared" God, what’s the basis left for morality? There needs to be a secular explanation for what is asserted by you, me and our societies, including our justice systems, for what is just, fair and right; but what would such an explanation be?

As long as there are human beings there is morality.

Again, it’s the other way around. Historically, “moralities” appear in conjunction with religious belief. So do all our law codes, and our conceptions of duty and obligation. There are no ancient societies of Atheists. Atheism, a late-bloom on our scene, neither contains a rationale for any morality nor can now fabricate one. And you can see that’s true: one cannot NOW even explain even one single precept, one single commandment, one single imperative that any Atheist is objectively obligated to do or not do.

I have often put that challenge to Atheists, and have never found one yet who could meet it. But if you think you can achieve what they could not, then I’m game to hear what you think it would be.

[Immanuel Can]

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!

I’m only quoting exactly what Belinda quoted, which was exactly what Jesus Christ Himself said. If you have an issue with that, you have an issue with Jesus Christ.

[Immanuel Can]

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.

And you think He was saying, “I am the only way, truth and life — but only until the weekend?”

[Martin Peter Clarke]

It's easier to understand the death of Socrates who also committed "suicide by cop". Both Jesus and Socrates were bloody nuisances to the authorities. Jesus and Socrates died rather than renounce their principles.

The human sacrifice element in the Doctrine of the Atonement is superstition. The ancient superstition of human sacrifice was overruled long before Jesus, by Abraham who substituted a lamb. No doubt Jesus knew about how human sacrifice was out of order. And Jesus was imitating the lamb substitute that Abraham sacrificed.
The practical implication of all this sacrificing business is that it's impossible for a well socialised person to go through life unscathed.

The rational way to understand the martyrdom of Jesus is to view it as a saving grace of human nature that humans can rise above their own selfish interests to sacrifice themselves for a cause. Other animals do so too. Elephants, whales, domestic dogs, apes, and so forth , mothers of all species where individuals' central nervous systems are well evolved.

Which just shows how natural it all is. No real God, Love transcendent, would need or require any of it. They'd just leave a timeless anachronism.

But the history of ideas is not an anachronism. Jesus, and all us ex-Christians are inheritors of that particular myth. You would not be you, Martin sans ideas that you inherited if only to reject the ideas . Every Dasein has a cultural inheritance including |the historical Jesus, including you ,and me.

Uh huh. There are those here believing that these entirely natural ideas, aren't. My city is awash with believers.

[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.”

But so what? I would “want" a billion dollars, and nobody gives it to me. What does what I “want” get 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 wait: on what basis?

Even if you have a court, what justification does that court have to say, “Mr X., you did to Gary something Gary wouldn’t want. Thus, we are justified and just to sentence you to…”what? What is the justifiable penalty for failing to give somebody what he “wants,” or for doing to him something he “didn’t want done to him”?

Morality doesn't magically disappear because there is no God.

You’ve got it backwards. If there had been no God, morality would never have appeared in the first place. Now that we’ve "magically disappeared" God, what’s the basis left for morality? There needs to be a secular explanation for what is asserted by you, me and our societies, including our justice systems, for what is just, fair and right; but what would such an explanation be?

As long as there are human beings there is morality.

Again, it’s the other way around. Historically, “moralities” appear in conjunction with religious belief. So do all our law codes, and our conceptions of duty and obligation. There are no ancient societies of Atheists. Atheism, a late-bloom on our scene, neither contains a rationale for any morality nor can now fabricate one. And you can see that’s true: one cannot NOW even explain even one single precept, one single commandment, one single imperative that any Atheist is objectively obligated to do or not do.

I have often put that challenge to Atheists, and have never found one yet who could meet it. But if you think you can achieve what they could not, then I’m game to hear what you think it would be.

"Morality doesn't magically disappear because there is no God.[/quote] You’ve got it backwards. If there had been no God, morality would never have appeared in the first place."(Immanuel Can)
Morality and God or gods together are caused by human nature. It is human nature to need codes of conduct and to need to personify each code. The code of conduct and the personification appeared as two aspects of the same human need.

[Belinda]

Which just shows how natural it all is. No real God, Love transcendent, would need or require any of it. They'd just leave a timeless anachronism.

But the history of ideas is not an anachronism. Jesus, and all us ex-Christians are inheritors of that particular myth. You would not be you, Martin sans ideas that you inherited if only to reject the ideas . Every Dasein has a cultural inheritance including |the historical Jesus, including you ,and me.

Uh huh. There are those here believing that these entirely natural ideas, aren't. My city is awash with believers.

Leicester is a good learning experience then for one who gets out and about as you do. I guess the locals are not as stroppy as posters to a group who only meet online.
What say you?

Are there any among the folk in your city who are like Immanuel Can ,who we may presume is not a woman in a burqa but who nevertheless believes in the literal existence of a creator God?

[Martin Peter Clarke]

But the history of ideas is not an anachronism. Jesus, and all us ex-Christians are inheritors of that particular myth. You would not be you, Martin sans ideas that you inherited if only to reject the ideas . Every Dasein has a cultural inheritance including |the historical Jesus, including you ,and me.

Uh huh. There are those here believing that these entirely natural ideas, aren't. My city is awash with believers.

Leicester is a good learning experience then for one who gets out and about as you do. I guess the locals are not as stroppy as posters to a group who only meet online.
What say you?

Are there any among the folk in your city who are like Immanuel Can ,who we may presume is not a woman in a burqa but who nevertheless believes in the literal existence of a creator God?

Absolutely. An American on this site, who knows all things, has told me how bad it is here. I obviously don't get out enough, tho' I walk down the most cosmopolitan street in Britain most days, just off which my wife was head of a school with 40 languages, or get the right 'news' feeds. And aye, at least two hundred thousand of them.

[Immanuel Can]

"Morality doesn't magically disappear because there is no God.

You’ve got it backwards. If there had been no God, morality would never have appeared in the first place."(Immanuel Can)

Morality and God or gods together are caused by human nature.

You can already see how impossible that is, B, if you only think about it for one second. Human beings are not eternal. They cannot be the ultimate cause of their own origin, far less of whatever uncaused Entity commenced the existence of human beings in the first place. You’re then left with two simple options: believe that God created man, or believe that man is a cosmic accident. But if it’s the latter, then there is no objective reality to morality at all, and never can be. But if it’s the first, then both morality and salvation exist, and it matters a great deal what we think about that.

But the complete nonsense, the absolute twaddle, is to suppose that man can “create” or “cause” God to exist. Man has no such ability. All he could do is deceive himself — about God, about morality, and about his own origins and duty. That, surely, must be obvious to you.

It is human nature to need codes of conduct and to need to personify each code.

Then you are only saying that it is man’s “need” to delude himself; and how can self-delusion be a “need” or a good thing, when it departs so radically from the truth of reality as you believe it to be?

The code of conduct and the personification appeared as two aspects of the same human need.

Then we are very great fools indeed. For you are saying that we imagine we have a “need” for the unreal, then we generate it, then we believe it makes rules incumbent upon us. We’re imaginers of both God and the moral.

Your account merely warrants that any sensible person, any realistic person, or any person who wishes to take the best advantage of how reality actually is, should dismiss both completely, as soon as he or she possibly can. The rest of the fools can continue to believe if they want, but the savvy must divest themselves of all such illusions, and live “beyond good and evil.”

Just as Nietzsche told you.

But Nietzsche knows better now. Make sure you learn earlier than he did the folly of that perspective.

[MikeNovack]

It's easier to understand the death of Socrates who also committed "suicide by cop".

To understand the (extremely odd) trial/conviction of Socrates you want to know about:
1) The latter part of the Peloponnesian War
2) Who Alcibiades was --- his refusal to continue as general unless the Athenians made him dictator. How that affected the outcome war when the Athenians refused.
3) Who was Alcibiades's teacher? Where did he get such crazy anti-democratic ideas?

That's why the weird votes, barely convicted but overwhelmingly condemned to death. Some were objecting to not using the REAL charges. Not "corrupting the youth" (youth in general) but corrupting a specific youth. But by the terms of Athens's surrender to Sparta, not allowed to try "anti-democratic traitors".


Philosophical question. Would it have made sense to put Hitler's teachers on trial? << if determined that one or more were the source of some of his ideas >>

[Belinda]

You’ve got it backwards. If there had been no God, morality would never have appeared in the first place."(Immanuel Can)

Morality and God or gods together are caused by human nature.

You can already see how impossible that is, B, if you only think about it for one second. Human beings are not eternal. They cannot be the ultimate cause of their own origin, far less of whatever uncaused Entity commenced the existence of human beings in the first place. You’re then left with two simple options: believe that God created man, or believe that man is a cosmic accident. But if it’s the latter, then there is no objective reality to morality at all, and never can be. But if it’s the first, then both morality and salvation exist, and it matters a great deal what we think about that.

But the complete nonsense, the absolute twaddle, is to suppose that man can “create” or “cause” God to exist. Man has no such ability. All he could do is deceive himself — about God, about morality, and about his own origins and duty. That, surely, must be obvious to you.

It is human nature to need codes of conduct and to need to personify each code.

Then you are only saying that it is man’s “need” to delude himself; and how can self-delusion be a “need” or a good thing, when it departs so radically from the truth of reality as you believe it to be?

The code of conduct and the personification appeared as two aspects of the same human need.

Then we are very great fools indeed. For you are saying that we imagine we have a “need” for the unreal, then we generate it, then we believe it makes rules incumbent upon us. We’re imaginers of both God and the moral.

Your account merely warrants that any sensible person, any realistic person, or any person who wishes to take the best advantage of how reality actually is, should dismiss both completely, as soon as he or she possibly can. The rest of the fools can continue to believe if they want, but the savvy must divest themselves of all such illusions, and live “beyond good and evil.”

Just as Nietzsche told you.

But Nietzsche knows better now. Make sure you learn earlier than he did the folly of that perspective.

I see how you feel. "Human beings are not eternal. They cannot be the ultimate cause of their own origin, far less of whatever uncaused Entity commenced the existence of human beings in the first place. You’re then left with two simple options: believe that God created man, or believe that man is a cosmic accident. "

There is yet another option .

*A deity wittingly designed and is the witting origin of man and the universe .

*Human beings are ,as you say, not eternal and so cannot be the original cause.

*Nature unwittingly designed mankind and the universe.

[Immanuel Can]

Morality and God or gods together are caused by human nature.

You can already see how impossible that is, B, if you only think about it for one second. Human beings are not eternal. They cannot be the ultimate cause of their own origin, far less of whatever uncaused Entity commenced the existence of human beings in the first place. You’re then left with two simple options: believe that God created man, or believe that man is a cosmic accident. But if it’s the latter, then there is no objective reality to morality at all, and never can be. But if it’s the first, then both morality and salvation exist, and it matters a great deal what we think about that.

But the complete nonsense, the absolute twaddle, is to suppose that man can “create” or “cause” God to exist. Man has no such ability. All he could do is deceive himself — about God, about morality, and about his own origins and duty. That, surely, must be obvious to you.

It is human nature to need codes of conduct and to need to personify each code.

Then you are only saying that it is man’s “need” to delude himself; and how can self-delusion be a “need” or a good thing, when it departs so radically from the truth of reality as you believe it to be?

The code of conduct and the personification appeared as two aspects of the same human need.

Then we are very great fools indeed. For you are saying that we imagine we have a “need” for the unreal, then we generate it, then we believe it makes rules incumbent upon us. We’re imaginers of both God and the moral.

Your account merely warrants that any sensible person, any realistic person, or any person who wishes to take the best advantage of how reality actually is, should dismiss both completely, as soon as he or she possibly can. The rest of the fools can continue to believe if they want, but the savvy must divest themselves of all such illusions, and live “beyond good and evil.”

Just as Nietzsche told you.

But Nietzsche knows better now. Make sure you learn earlier than he did the folly of that perspective.

I see how you feel.

It’s not about “feelings,” B. “Feelings” are quite irrelevant to this. It’s about what’s true, obvious and logical.

"Human beings are not eternal. They cannot be the ultimate cause of their own origin, far less of whatever uncaused Entity commenced the existence of human beings in the first place. You’re then left with two simple options: believe that God created man, or believe that man is a cosmic accident. "

There is yet another option .

*A deity wittingly designed and is the witting origin of man and the universe .

*Human beings are ,as you say, not eternal and so cannot be the original cause.

*Nature unwittingly designed mankind and the universe.

What’s this third option, of which you speak? You’ve still only listed two different things. The first and the second are completely compatible, and, I suggest, both true, as well. So what’s the other possibility?

Without a genuine third, we’re back to the same two options: either God designed man, or Nature, which has no “wit” about these things, did it by accident. But if the second were the case, morality is excluded anyway.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Morality and God or gods together are caused by human nature.

You can already see how impossible that is, B, if you only think about it for one second. Human beings are not eternal. They cannot be the ultimate cause of their own origin, far less of whatever uncaused Entity commenced the existence of human beings in the first place. You’re then left with two simple options: believe that God created man, or believe that man is a cosmic accident. But if it’s the latter, then there is no objective reality to morality at all, and never can be. But if it’s the first, then both morality and salvation exist, and it matters a great deal what we think about that.

But the complete nonsense, the absolute twaddle, is to suppose that man can “create” or “cause” God to exist. Man has no such ability. All he could do is deceive himself — about God, about morality, and about his own origins and duty. That, surely, must be obvious to you.

It is human nature to need codes of conduct and to need to personify each code.

Then you are only saying that it is man’s “need” to delude himself; and how can self-delusion be a “need” or a good thing, when it departs so radically from the truth of reality as you believe it to be?

The code of conduct and the personification appeared as two aspects of the same human need.

Then we are very great fools indeed. For you are saying that we imagine we have a “need” for the unreal, then we generate it, then we believe it makes rules incumbent upon us. We’re imaginers of both God and the moral.

Your account merely warrants that any sensible person, any realistic person, or any person who wishes to take the best advantage of how reality actually is, should dismiss both completely, as soon as he or she possibly can. The rest of the fools can continue to believe if they want, but the savvy must divest themselves of all such illusions, and live “beyond good and evil.”

Just as Nietzsche told you.

But Nietzsche knows better now. Make sure you learn earlier than he did the folly of that perspective.

I see how you feel. "Human beings are not eternal. They cannot be the ultimate cause of their own origin, far less of whatever uncaused Entity commenced the existence of human beings in the first place. You’re then left with two simple options: believe that God created man, or believe that man is a cosmic accident. "

There is yet another option .

*A deity wittingly designed and is the witting origin of man and the universe .

*Human beings are ,as you say, not eternal and so cannot be the original cause.

*Nature unwittingly designed mankind and the universe.

Why did you respond as if there's any reason, any meaning there Belinda?