Philosophy Now Forum

Walker wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 5:46 pm During periods of extreme Christian persecution (evil attacking good, i.e., everything falling apart which happens in the best of times and the worst of times), good goes underground since one divine martyr is enough, and not everyone is a knight in shining armour.

I wrote a pamphlet on that topic! It is available at $59.99 (audio version $69.99).

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 1:13 pm
If there is a Ground to reground on, it cannot be defined at this juncture.

Not being gods, we have to wait for the result or strive for one, however tentative it may be in manifesting itself; such transitions cause all religions and philosophies to eventually become archival. Nihilism is its low point, the deepest valley of such transitions and thus integral to it.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 1:13 pm If there is a Ground to reground on, it cannot be defined at this juncture.

That’s the weasely way to put it, actually…to acknowledge the failure, but deny it’s a real failure, because we might be able to issue a promissory note toward a future solution we realize a) we don’t have, and b) we have zero evidence right now, admittedly, that we will EVER have.

The truth is most probably simpler: there is not now, nor will there ever be, a basis to ground ethics in secularism. As many smart people there are today who are secularists, not one of them has been able to come within a million miles of a solution. At some point, it has to be admitted to our own consciousness that it is most likely that this imagined “Ground to reground on” simply will never exist.

So the more likely outcome is that there IS no solution to that dilemma. And there most probably never will be. But right now, the one thing upon which everybody can agree, is there’s no way to ground things like a personal ethics, social relations, a law code, or an ultimate teleological orientation point in secularism. Right now, it’s bankrupt. If it’s going to do anything else in the future, well, by dint of present evidence, anybody who hopes so is more full of bad faith (as Sartre called it) than the wildest religious zealot has ever been known to be.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 9:03 pm The truth is most probably simpler: there is not now, nor will there ever be, a basis to ground ethics in secularism.

This line caught me. I think I can perfect it:

There is no way to ground ethics in Nature. The world. What surrounds us. That into which we are incarnate.

My truth is simpler than yours. But extremely practical and “time-saving”.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 1:30 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 11:38 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Jul 26, 2025 7:18 pm
I can’t see that I listed any statistics, so I’m not sure what your objection is. The facts are evident to anybody who sees the daily news, or has the most basic familiarity with those worldviews. And if you know what each religion teaches, you know it’s the truth.

You wrote: "The more people are genuinely Christian, the more peace, mercy and justice there will be; the more people are devoted to Islam…well, you can see the results."
Many people think as you do. many people dispute your claim

But you can see that they’re wrong. Only people who do as I have described are walking in the steps of Jesus Christ. Those who do evil are not. There’s no possibility of disputing that, really. If you know Jesus Christ, who He was and what He taught, and take it seriously, you’re going to be the best sort of person. If you take only the name “Christian,” and do not do what He says, then you’re only a hypocrite — but our hypocrisy is not fault of His, of course.

and name it islamophobia.

“Islamophobia” is an interesting bit of propaganda. It’s a little bit like “rapophobia,” or “slaveryphobia,” or “murderphobia.” It tries to imply that you’re irrational, and perhaps that you’re mentally ill (i.e. “phobic”), for having an aversion to horrible things.

But consider Mo. How would anybody who makes himself reproduce Mo’s behaviour and teaching — as alleged and described by Islamists themselves -- be a good person? Would it be the pillaging and mass murders that attract you? The taking of a child bride? The wife-beatings? The enslavements and killings of Christians and Jews? And there’s even much, much worse described of Mo in that Haddiths than is delivered by the Koran. And if you knew Islam, you’d know that.

But we don’t know much about Islam. That’s why we fall for the “Islamophobia” propaganda.

As in the case of Xianity, there are Islamic reformers.Xianity and Islam both span a spectrum: at the liberal end, they emphasize ethics, inclusivity, and reinterpretation of tradition, while reformist and conservative forms uphold varying degrees of classical teaching and practice. At the far end are fundamentalist interpretations with strict literalism, and a small extremist fringe that pushes toward theocratic or militant aims.

Liberal Muslims have more in common with liberal Christians than fundamentalist Christians have with liberal Christians.

Belinda wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:00 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 1:30 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 11:38 am

You wrote: "The more people are genuinely Christian, the more peace, mercy and justice there will be; the more people are devoted to Islam…well, you can see the results."
Many people think as you do. many people dispute your claim

But you can see that they’re wrong. Only people who do as I have described are walking in the steps of Jesus Christ. Those who do evil are not. There’s no possibility of disputing that, really. If you know Jesus Christ, who He was and what He taught, and take it seriously, you’re going to be the best sort of person. If you take only the name “Christian,” and do not do what He says, then you’re only a hypocrite — but our hypocrisy is not fault of His, of course.

and name it islamophobia.

“Islamophobia” is an interesting bit of propaganda. It’s a little bit like “rapophobia,” or “slaveryphobia,” or “murderphobia.” It tries to imply that you’re irrational, and perhaps that you’re mentally ill (i.e. “phobic”), for having an aversion to horrible things.

But consider Mo. How would anybody who makes himself reproduce Mo’s behaviour and teaching — as alleged and described by Islamists themselves -- be a good person? Would it be the pillaging and mass murders that attract you? The taking of a child bride? The wife-beatings? The enslavements and killings of Christians and Jews? And there’s even much, much worse described of Mo in that Haddiths than is delivered by the Koran. And if you knew Islam, you’d know that.

But we don’t know much about Islam. That’s why we fall for the “Islamophobia” propaganda.

As in the case of Xianity, there are Islamic reformers.

But even there, “reform” means something different. “Reform,” in Christianity, is a return the Biblical standard of mercy, truth and justice. “Reform” in Islam is a return to the cruelty, viciousness, xenophobia, terrorism and violence of Shariah, and of Islam as Moh decreed it and modelled it in the 6th Century.

Reform in Christianity gives you people who are more Christ-like. Reform in Islam gives you many Mohammeds.

You’re making the old Humanist mistake, you see: that is, without knowing any of the particulars of any religion, to imagine that underneath their skins, they’ll all turn out to be liberal and Humanist. But Islamic propagandists know how to manipulate that naivete. They call their religion “the religion of peace,” and let the liberals write the rest of the script with their imaginations. And secular liberals, so desperate to see their metanarrative come to fruition, buy right in. But what the Islamic leaders want is not what you want: you see what they want, spread out before you in the streets of Birmingham, Rotherham, London…and still, the secular liberals will not believe the testimony of their own eyes.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:30 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:00 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 1:30 pm
But you can see that they’re wrong. Only people who do as I have described are walking in the steps of Jesus Christ. Those who do evil are not. There’s no possibility of disputing that, really. If you know Jesus Christ, who He was and what He taught, and take it seriously, you’re going to be the best sort of person. If you take only the name “Christian,” and do not do what He says, then you’re only a hypocrite — but our hypocrisy is not fault of His, of course.


“Islamophobia” is an interesting bit of propaganda. It’s a little bit like “rapophobia,” or “slaveryphobia,” or “murderphobia.” It tries to imply that you’re irrational, and perhaps that you’re mentally ill (i.e. “phobic”), for having an aversion to horrible things.

But consider Mo. How would anybody who makes himself reproduce Mo’s behaviour and teaching — as alleged and described by Islamists themselves -- be a good person? Would it be the pillaging and mass murders that attract you? The taking of a child bride? The wife-beatings? The enslavements and killings of Christians and Jews? And there’s even much, much worse described of Mo in that Haddiths than is delivered by the Koran. And if you knew Islam, you’d know that.

But we don’t know much about Islam. That’s why we fall for the “Islamophobia” propaganda.

As in the case of Xianity, there are Islamic reformers.

But even there, “reform” means something different. “Reform,” in Christianity, is a return the Biblical standard of mercy, truth and justice. “Reform” in Islam is a return to the cruelty, viciousness, xenophobia, terrorism and violence of Shariah, and of Islam as Moh decreed it and modelled it in the 6th Century.

Reform in Christianity gives you people who are more Christ-like. Reform in Islam gives you many Mohammeds.

You’re making the old Humanist mistake, you see: that is, without knowing any of the particulars of any religion, to imagine that underneath their skins, they’ll all turn out to be liberal and Humanist. But Islamic propagandists know how to manipulate that naivete. They call their religion “the religion of peace,” and let the liberals write the rest of the script with their imaginations. And secular liberals, so desperate to see their metanarrative come to fruition, buy right in. But what the Islamic leaders want is not what you want: you see what they want, spread out before you in the streets of Birmingham, Rotherham, London…and still, the secular liberals will not believe the testimony of their own eyes.

Yes, but Christians too get up to those tricks.
You are fundamentalist and I'm liberal. You aren't allowing for different personalities. Jesus did allow for different personalities ; the Samaritan was liberal as to doctrine , therefore he was the one who exhibited fundamental human kindness and that is what made all the difference.
I crave your patience while I break that down. Samaritans were not Jews and Jews sort of despised them. Yet the Samaritan in the story put aside Samaritan doctrine when a Jew really needed help. And that is what mattered.

Belinda wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:36 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:30 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:00 pm

As in the case of Xianity, there are Islamic reformers.

But even there, “reform” means something different. “Reform,” in Christianity, is a return the Biblical standard of mercy, truth and justice. “Reform” in Islam is a return to the cruelty, viciousness, xenophobia, terrorism and violence of Shariah, and of Islam as Moh decreed it and modelled it in the 6th Century.

Reform in Christianity gives you people who are more Christ-like. Reform in Islam gives you many Mohammeds.

You’re making the old Humanist mistake, you see: that is, without knowing any of the particulars of any religion, to imagine that underneath their skins, they’ll all turn out to be liberal and Humanist. But Islamic propagandists know how to manipulate that naivete. They call their religion “the religion of peace,” and let the liberals write the rest of the script with their imaginations. And secular liberals, so desperate to see their metanarrative come to fruition, buy right in. But what the Islamic leaders want is not what you want: you see what they want, spread out before you in the streets of Birmingham, Rotherham, London…and still, the secular liberals will not believe the testimony of their own eyes.

Yes, but Christians too get up to those tricks.

What you really mean, if only your liberal Humanism didn’t forbid you even to think it, is that people abuse the name Christian by taking it as their label, while simultaneously behaving nothing like Jesus Christ. To be a “Christian,” by definition, is to be “a little Christ.” And the people you’re talking about don’t do that.

But don’t worry: Christ Himself had very strong words for those who do what you’re talking about. And he promises them condemnation, not salvation. See Matthew 25:31-end.

Meanwhile, there’s nothing comparable, even among the merely nominal under the “Christian” label that is even remotely comparable to what Islam has done and is doing. Compare, for example, the Catholic crusades to the Islamic: which was, by far, the longest, cruelest and most persistent crusade between the two? Or compare what even the very worst nominal “Christians" today are doing in the UK, and match it to Rotherham or Birmingham…and what do you see?

You are fundamentalist and I'm liberal.

Actually, I’m more genuinely liberal than you are, I think. I believe in complete freedom of conscience, and you’re a Socialist, I believe. (Correct me if I’ve misread your politics.) I think conscience is sacred, and Socialists believe that all people must be made into Marx’s “new Socialist man,” or be killed.

Doesn’t seem very “liberal” to me.

Jesus did allow for different personalities

Not the Jesus of the Bible. Maybe the “Jesus” of the secular imagination. “Personality” is not really the issue. What we do with Christ is the issue, regardless of what “personality” we plead to having.

Imagine believing, and absolutely, so disillusioned that one very specific and particular version of "christianity" is the only 'right way' to go through Life and that any and every form of 'secular' is misguided.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:52 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:36 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:30 pm
But even there, “reform” means something different. “Reform,” in Christianity, is a return the Biblical standard of mercy, truth and justice. “Reform” in Islam is a return to the cruelty, viciousness, xenophobia, terrorism and violence of Shariah, and of Islam as Moh decreed it and modelled it in the 6th Century.

Reform in Christianity gives you people who are more Christ-like. Reform in Islam gives you many Mohammeds.

You’re making the old Humanist mistake, you see: that is, without knowing any of the particulars of any religion, to imagine that underneath their skins, they’ll all turn out to be liberal and Humanist. But Islamic propagandists know how to manipulate that naivete. They call their religion “the religion of peace,” and let the liberals write the rest of the script with their imaginations. And secular liberals, so desperate to see their metanarrative come to fruition, buy right in. But what the Islamic leaders want is not what you want: you see what they want, spread out before you in the streets of Birmingham, Rotherham, London…and still, the secular liberals will not believe the testimony of their own eyes.

Yes, but Christians too get up to those tricks.

What you really mean, if only your liberal Humanism didn’t forbid you even to think it, is that people abuse the name Christian by taking it as their label, while simultaneously behaving nothing like Jesus Christ. To be a “Christian,” by definition, is to be “a little Christ.” And the people you’re talking about don’t do that.

But don’t worry: Christ Himself had very strong words for those who do what you’re talking about. And he promises them condemnation, not salvation. See Matthew 25:31-end.

Meanwhile, there’s nothing comparable, even among the merely nominal under the “Christian” label that is even remotely comparable to what Islam has done and is doing. Compare, for example, the Catholic crusades to the Islamic: which was, by far, the longest, cruelest and most persistent crusade between the two? Or compare what even the very worst nominal “Christians" today are doing in the UK, and match it to Rotherham or Birmingham…and what do you see?

You are fundamentalist and I'm liberal.

Actually, I’m more genuinely liberal than you are, I think. I believe in complete freedom of conscience, and you’re a Socialist, I believe. (Correct me if I’ve misread your politics.) I think conscience is sacred, and Socialists believe that all people must be made into Marx’s “new Socialist man,” or be killed.

Doesn’t seem very “liberal” to me.

Jesus did allow for different personalities

Not the Jesus of the Bible. Maybe the “Jesus” of the secular imagination. “Personality” is not really the issue. What we do with Christ is the issue, regardless of what “personality” we plead to having.

"immanuel can" is one of the "christ" like people, here, this why it is living so disillusioned and, unknowingly, tormented.

The poor fool actually believes that it knows more, and is this more superior, here.

it has proven over and over, again and again, that it is completely incapable of countering or refuting what I say and argue, here, yet it, still, believes that it knows more and lives more "christ" like.

How Wrong they were, in the days when this was written.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:52 pm Actually, I’m more genuinely liberal than you are, I think. I believe in complete freedom of conscience, and you’re a Socialist, I believe. (Correct me if I’ve misread your politics.) I think conscience is sacred, and Socialists believe that all people must be made into Marx’s “new Socialist man,” or be killed.

Doesn’t seem very “liberal” to me.

I am going to ask you to explain why you are saying this. You are a socialist => you are a Marxist => you are a "state socialist"=> must convert to this or die. True, many Marxists insist that THEY are the only true leftists, and if "state socialists" that only state socialism is socialism, and to be forced on all.. Just like SOME branches of Christianity have maintained that they were the only real Christians and that they have the right to enforce this on all on pain of death. I don't accuse you of taking a position like this "because you are a Christian" so why are you doing it to somebody who identifies as "leftist".

In other words, I want you to explain why you are attacking (for example) the "True Levellers" (aka "The Diggers"). !7th Century, so could not be Marxists. Not "state socialists" either. Devout Protestant Christians, so what they said they believed in should be accessible to you. Or you could consider the "Catholic Workers" (left anarchist, not state socialist). I think this will be more interesting than if I had given you secular examples to explain.

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Mon Jul 28, 2025 12:56 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:52 pm Actually, I’m more genuinely liberal than you are, I think. I believe in complete freedom of conscience, and you’re a Socialist, I believe. (Correct me if I’ve misread your politics.) I think conscience is sacred, and Socialists believe that all people must be made into Marx’s “new Socialist man,” or be killed.

Doesn’t seem very “liberal” to me.

I am going to ask you to explain why you are saying this. You are a socialist => you are a Marxist => you are a "state socialist"=> must convert to this or die.

A very fair request, Mike. Happy to oblige.

...why are you doing it to somebody who identifies as "leftist".

I’m not, Mike.

I hesitate to summarize Marx to you, because it’s really pretty hard to believe he said what he said, and thought what he thought. Unless you actually read him, you’re going to find it hard to believe anybody would or could believe it. But I think I owe you an explanation, and you’ve asked so reasonably that I can hardly not provide it.

I’ll try to make it as straightforward as I can. Simply put, the equation is this.

Socialists believe that humanity is socially-constructed. Men, or better, humans are not born; they are made. This is a belief you can find in many of the modern Marxist writers.

That’s a big idea to unpack. But what you and I think of as “humans” are not (per Marxism) humans at all. Rather, they are born something else: sub-human, or “alienated from their true humanity” by Industrial Revolution England. “Humanization” is the process by which a person is inducted from this “alienated” condition in the existing society, into Socialism. Only “the Socialist man” has true knowledge of himself, of history and of his duties. Only such a one is truly “human.”

I know. It’s crazy. But it’s what he thought. And you see the same in later Marxists. Mao, for example, speaks about and praises “the People.” But whenever he does, it’s not all the Chinese people he has in mind; it’s only the Socialists. Only the Socialists get to count as "the People," or have “the People’s standpoint,” as he called it, and thus can make true statements, those in the interests of “the People.” Nobody else counts.

So what are non-Socialists? They’re subhumans. But it’s worse than that, and Marx and his followers tend to use stronger language. These people who exempt themselves from Socialist consciousness are not just “prehuman” or “subhuman” or “alienated from their true humanity.” They are “capitalists,” and “exploiters” and “the rich” and “reactionaries,” and “counter-revolutionaries,” and “subversive elements,” and “the People’s enemies,” and “oppressors,” and “colonialists,” and “on the wrong side of history,” and “a basket of deplorables,” and “Nazis” and “racists” and “homophobes” and “Islamophobes” and “retrograde,” and so on. In other words, people who choose not to be Socialist are ruining the Socialist plan of creating utopia by having everybody become a Socialist. They are standing in the way of Socialist “heaven,” so to speak. Unless their influence is removed, the Socialist program will continue to fail. There’s nothing wrong with Socialism, you see; it’s all the fault of those who resist Socialism.

So these are very “bad” people, in Socialist thinking. They’re standing in the way of everybody else’s happiness. They’re alienated, and preventing others from actualizing their true humanity. Moreover, remember that they’re not really “human.” So one can do to them whatever one finds necessary. And this is why collectivisms tend to hate individuals, and why Socialists always kill so many people —140 million in the last century alone, more than any other single cause in human history.

In other words, I want you to explain why you are attacking (for example) the "True Levellers" (aka "The Diggers").

You’ll have to show me where I mentioned them at all. Likewise, the trade unionists, and the Luddites, or whatever, who were proto-Marxists, perhaps, but lacked the full-blown ideological package of Modern Socialism. And they’re not involved in anything today, to my knowledge. So there’s not much to say about them, really.

That is not to say that earlier Socialisms were good, but it’s only post-Marxist Socialism or Nazi Socialism that went to the extremes we witness in Modern and Postmodern Socialisms. Shafarevich, who’s book “The Socialist Phenomenon” I just finished reading, makes a case to say that Socialism is a general tendency (not a healthy one) that dates back to the ancient world. He finds evidence of it in such places as Babylon and the Inca Empire, as well as various philosophies of antiquity, and heretical sects of the Medieval World, and so on. To be sure, all of these were toxic, deluded and dysfunctional, but all in different ways. It took Marx, who was not nearly so original as his acolytes would like us to suppose, to consolidate Socialism into the Marxist idealogical form we have in early Modernity. But the impulse predates him.

I don’t think any of these older sects and cultures had a social-constructivist anthropology. Their thinking was more a simplistic “them-and-us” kind of hatred, or xenophobia, which so far as I know, was never theorized in the sort of detailed way in which Marx theorized it. So their antipathies seem to have been more simple. It really took a Marx to refine these animosities into a convoluted package of rationales involving such things as “alienation” and “dehumanization.”

So why, in Socialist thinking, must all opponents of Socialism die? Because they’re not Socialist. Because non-Socialists do not have true “consciousness,” true “humanity,” true “standpoint,” and are impeding the project of everybody else’s aspired utopia, merely by the fact that they do not join the program, or worse, because they dare to criticize it. Because collectivism demands to be universal. Because only when Socialism rules all economic systems and the entire world will Socialism bear its true fruit anywhere. All along, the failures of Socialism have again been nothing but the fault of those who would not join. This is what they believe.

And great is their wrath when Socialism fails yet again. They go looking for scapegoats, and find them first among the external enemies, and internally, among the obvious dissenters, then among all their own people who were “insufficiently revolutionary,” and then in an endless chain of “enemies of the revolution” alleged to be buried among the good Socialists, who must be witch-hunted out and eliminated. And this sequence you see reproduced in Socialist regimes all over the world.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:52 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:36 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:30 pm
But even there, “reform” means something different. “Reform,” in Christianity, is a return the Biblical standard of mercy, truth and justice. “Reform” in Islam is a return to the cruelty, viciousness, xenophobia, terrorism and violence of Shariah, and of Islam as Moh decreed it and modelled it in the 6th Century.

Reform in Christianity gives you people who are more Christ-like. Reform in Islam gives you many Mohammeds.

You’re making the old Humanist mistake, you see: that is, without knowing any of the particulars of any religion, to imagine that underneath their skins, they’ll all turn out to be liberal and Humanist. But Islamic propagandists know how to manipulate that naivete. They call their religion “the religion of peace,” and let the liberals write the rest of the script with their imaginations. And secular liberals, so desperate to see their metanarrative come to fruition, buy right in. But what the Islamic leaders want is not what you want: you see what they want, spread out before you in the streets of Birmingham, Rotherham, London…and still, the secular liberals will not believe the testimony of their own eyes.

Yes, but Christians too get up to those tricks.

What you really mean, if only your liberal Humanism didn’t forbid you even to think it, is that people abuse the name Christian by taking it as their label, while simultaneously behaving nothing like Jesus Christ. To be a “Christian,” by definition, is to be “a little Christ.” And the people you’re talking about don’t do that.

But don’t worry: Christ Himself had very strong words for those who do what you’re talking about. And he promises them condemnation, not salvation. See Matthew 25:31-end.

Meanwhile, there’s nothing comparable, even among the merely nominal under the “Christian” label that is even remotely comparable to what Islam has done and is doing. Compare, for example, the Catholic crusades to the Islamic: which was, by far, the longest, cruelest and most persistent crusade between the two? Or compare what even the very worst nominal “Christians" today are doing in the UK, and match it to Rotherham or Birmingham…and what do you see?

You are fundamentalist and I'm liberal.

Actually, I’m more genuinely liberal than you are, I think. I believe in complete freedom of conscience, and you’re a Socialist, I believe. (Correct me if I’ve misread your politics.) I think conscience is sacred, and Socialists believe that all people must be made into Marx’s “new Socialist man,” or be killed.

Doesn’t seem very “liberal” to me.

Jesus did allow for different personalities

Not the Jesus of the Bible. Maybe the “Jesus” of the secular imagination. “Personality” is not really the issue. What we do with Christ is the issue, regardless of what “personality” we plead to having.

Once again your view of comparative criminality in specific British cities is biased and unscientific. And once again you conflate socialism with political communism.Once again you inform me as to what and who I am.

"Different personalities" includes allegiance to different religious doctrines. Please remember the Samaritans were not Jews. Christianity is universal which means it's adaptable to all people everywhere. What holds all the different strands of Christianity together is the myth of Christ. The myth of Christ is universal not divisive . Jesus is AN ICON for the most fundamentalist and also the most liberal .

What we do with Christ is the issue, regardless of what “personality” we plead to having.

(I.C.)
Matthew 25:21 (from the Bible) reads as follows:

"His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord."
— King James Version (KJV)

Different talents different personalities. There is that of the good God in every man.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:52 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:36 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:30 pm
But even there, “reform” means something different. “Reform,” in Christianity, is a return the Biblical standard of mercy, truth and justice. “Reform” in Islam is a return to the cruelty, viciousness, xenophobia, terrorism and violence of Shariah, and of Islam as Moh decreed it and modelled it in the 6th Century.

Reform in Christianity gives you people who are more Christ-like. Reform in Islam gives you many Mohammeds.

You’re making the old Humanist mistake, you see: that is, without knowing any of the particulars of any religion, to imagine that underneath their skins, they’ll all turn out to be liberal and Humanist. But Islamic propagandists know how to manipulate that naivete. They call their religion “the religion of peace,” and let the liberals write the rest of the script with their imaginations. And secular liberals, so desperate to see their metanarrative come to fruition, buy right in. But what the Islamic leaders want is not what you want: you see what they want, spread out before you in the streets of Birmingham, Rotherham, London…and still, the secular liberals will not believe the testimony of their own eyes.

Yes, but Christians too get up to those tricks.

What you really mean, if only your liberal Humanism didn’t forbid you even to think it, is that people abuse the name Christian by taking it as their label, while simultaneously behaving nothing like Jesus Christ. To be a “Christian,” by definition, is to be “a little Christ.” And the people you’re talking about don’t do that.

But don’t worry: Christ Himself had very strong words for those who do what you’re talking about. And he promises them condemnation, not salvation. See Matthew 25:31-end.

Meanwhile, there’s nothing comparable, even among the merely nominal under the “Christian” label that is even remotely comparable to what Islam has done and is doing. Compare, for example, the Catholic crusades to the Islamic: which was, by far, the longest, cruelest and most persistent crusade between the two? Or compare what even the very worst nominal “Christians" today are doing in the UK, and match it to Rotherham or Birmingham…and what do you see?

You are fundamentalist and I'm liberal.

Actually, I’m more genuinely liberal than you are, I think. I believe in complete freedom of conscience, and you’re a Socialist, I believe. (Correct me if I’ve misread your politics.) I think conscience is sacred, and Socialists believe that all people must be made into Marx’s “new Socialist man,” or be killed.

Doesn’t seem very “liberal” to me.

Jesus did allow for different personalities

Not the Jesus of the Bible.

'This one' has proved over and I er, again and again, that it does not yet even have a clue as to who and what the so-called "jesus of the bible" is nor is even referring to, exactly, like in the same way it, still, believes the 'God of the bible' has a penis and testicles. Which goes to show and prove, again irrefutably, just how disillusioned 'this one' really is

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:52 pm Maybe the “Jesus” of the secular imagination. “Personality” is not really the issue. What we do with Christ is the issue, regardless of what “personality” we plead to having.

Belinda wrote: ↑Mon Jul 28, 2025 10:00 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:52 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Sun Jul 27, 2025 10:36 pm
Yes, but Christians too get up to those tricks.

What you really mean, if only your liberal Humanism didn’t forbid you even to think it, is that people abuse the name Christian by taking it as their label, while simultaneously behaving nothing like Jesus Christ. To be a “Christian,” by definition, is to be “a little Christ.” And the people you’re talking about don’t do that.

But don’t worry: Christ Himself had very strong words for those who do what you’re talking about. And he promises them condemnation, not salvation. See Matthew 25:31-end.

Meanwhile, there’s nothing comparable, even among the merely nominal under the “Christian” label that is even remotely comparable to what Islam has done and is doing. Compare, for example, the Catholic crusades to the Islamic: which was, by far, the longest, cruelest and most persistent crusade between the two? Or compare what even the very worst nominal “Christians" today are doing in the UK, and match it to Rotherham or Birmingham…and what do you see?

You are fundamentalist and I'm liberal.

Actually, I’m more genuinely liberal than you are, I think. I believe in complete freedom of conscience, and you’re a Socialist, I believe. (Correct me if I’ve misread your politics.) I think conscience is sacred, and Socialists believe that all people must be made into Marx’s “new Socialist man,” or be killed.

Doesn’t seem very “liberal” to me.

Jesus did allow for different personalities

Not the Jesus of the Bible. Maybe the “Jesus” of the secular imagination. “Personality” is not really the issue. What we do with Christ is the issue, regardless of what “personality” we plead to having.

Once again your view of comparative criminality in specific British cities is biased and unscientific.

Not at all, actually. And you know it’s not.

But this always is astonishing about Leftism: it purports to advocate for “the oppressed,” or “the marginalized,” or whatever, but never does them one bit of good. The girls of Rotherham, it immolates on the altar of its PC-ness of “Islamophobia.” The sufferers of the American inner cities, it does not elevate, but ruins their neighbourhoods and then adds nothing.

Where is this vaulted Socialist “compassion”? Whenever it’s called upon, it fails to show up. It’s great at wrecking the status quo, but never builds even one positive thing.

And once again you conflate socialism with political communism.

No, I know the difference. But the similarities are so great that it’s often not possible to make claims about one without also indicting both.

Once again you inform me as to what and who I am.

No again. I asked if you were a Socialist, and invited you to correct me. Are you?

"Different personalities" includes allegiance to different religious doctrines.

That’s not “personality.” That’s belief, or credence, or loyalty, if you like. But people of any “personality” can choose any doctrine as their own.

Christianity is universal which means it's adaptable to all people everywhere.

This is the problem. Any creed that “adapts to man” becomes worse than it should be, because men, in their natural state, are not only capable but inclined to evil.

Did you ever ask yourself, or Socialist ideologues, this question: if “society” is “corrupting,” then who invented “society”? If man were only good, why would not his social constructions also automatically be good? From whence this “dark Satanic” (Blake) evil that has become society? There is no real Satan, right? And no God? Only man. So from where could the corruption in man ever have come? People who are purely good can only do pure good. But this is not what we observe: even Socialists or Communists are all hot with anger over the state of the existing society. But how was that society ever made corrupt, unless the potential and propensity for such corruption, such exploitation, such inequality and such “social injustice” was already in man?

And if it was, what is Socialism going to do about that?

Christianity does not “adapt to man”; it seeks to adapt man to God. And that’s exactly what man most needs. For the absence of it, all his social-engineering plans, no matter how elaborate and theorized, have always failed — and Socialism has failed more spectacularly than any.