Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

I wasn't aware of me complaining! Why would I? I thought we were debating. I must have forgotten for a moment whom I'm debating with, or if any real debate is possible.

Are you going to actually answer the question? Or are you now deciding you had no idea what you were really asking?

...since that's what you really want to believe, be my guest! I already expressed myself in detail. No more!

Your “detail” didn’t include any articulation of what your criticism of God actually was. It was an easy question, and I even helped you parse your own language to arrive at a partial answer…but you couldn’t finish the job?

I think you could, if you were willing to self-analyze. But since I can’t do that for you, I have to accept your refusal to say more, I guess.

[Immanuel Can]

Not promise of reward, and not fear of punishment cause healthy men to be good. Healthy men are good for the sake of being good.

If you imagine that’s what it’s all about, then yeah, you’re right: it wouldn’t achieve that purpose. But then, it isn’t about “making men good.” It’s about what fulfills the human telos and affords harmonious relationship with the Ultimate Good.

The finality of death does not mean a heavenly judge. The finality of death means a life story can be told.

To whom? In another few years, the very existence of most people will have been forgotten…and according to the Naturalistic story, there’s nobody capable of preserving even the memory of the dead, let alone any of their essence. And, as Robert Browning so wisely pointed out, “living on in the memory of others” isn’t actually living at all. It’s feeding the worms with one’s flesh.

I agree that harmonious relationship with the ultimate good is the same as the good life.

I didn’t say that. And while it would depend on what you mean by “good life,” (if you meant it in an Aristotelian way, for example), I’m inclined to think maybe you’re mistaking “good” for something quite different than it really is. But I can’t tell from your wording.

Ultimate good is the same as reason and necessity.

No, that’s clearly not the case. “Necessity” is what one is forced to do; “reason” is a mental operation, and doesn’t imply any specific “doing” at all. And the ultimate good is God. So those things are quite distinct.

I agree "as Robert Browning so wisely pointed out, “living on in the memory of others” isn’t actually living at all. It’s feeding the worms with one’s flesh."

Death is good as it is the finality without which no life would have meaning.Meaning does not have to be meaning for another. Meaning correlates perfectly with reason.

Now “meaning” is added to that distinct triad? No, it doesn’t fit. “Reason” doesn’t impart “meaning,” and neither does “necessity,” obviously. As for “ultimate good,” you’re closer to right on that one, in that meaning pertains to the ultimate good. But the rest just looks to me like rhetorical flourishes.

You’ll have to explain how death “adds meaning” to life. That’s not intuitive or obvious in any way. Most people think death is to be avoided, and it’s not at all desirable…that is, mentally-healthy people think that.

As for “meaning” as being not “for another,” it’s irrelevant if one is dead. People won’t remember you, and you won’t remember anything, if death ends all. So that just means NOBODY’S got “meaning” for your life…neither you, nor anybody else.

[Immanuel Can]

But you frame it as though it's best to believe the Bible because, well, the Bible (like any number of other assumptions or speculations about the unknown) might be true.

Only to show deference to your position, not to imply my own. It’s only you who is saying you’re unsure.

I’m only showing you what makes sense. When you find yourself in a position in which there is not even a possible win for you, you might want to rethink that position.

So if someone tells us that their God's Hell is twice as bad as Yahweh's and that their God requires human sacrifices and that not observing their God's wishes will result in being condemned to that Hell, should I observe that God "just in case", you know, as a precaution to avoid that God's greater punishment?

Here’s how it’s going to play out, Gary: you’re going to have to stake your life on something. A wise man will stake it on the most plausible belief. A foolish man will stake it on his own impulses, or on something he doesn’t really find credible but finds palatable or convenient. But every life is a wager on something as being the truth. And there are no exceptions, and no escaping that inevitability.

Right now, maybe, you’re staking it on secularism. Or maybe it’s on no more than “I don’t want to think about it.” I can’t say. You can. But if it’s on secularism, bear in mind that secularism, of all the options, offers you no win. If it’s right, you’ll never know it is; if it’s wrong, you will.

Better to choose a different option, then. But choose wisely. Your eternal soul depends on your choice.

[Alexis Jacobi]

As Robert Browning so wisely pointed out, “living on in the memory of others” isn’t actually living at all. It’s feeding the worms with one’s flesh."

No specific poem of Browning could be located with this exact line. What poem is being referenced?

[Immanuel Can]

As Robert Browning so wisely pointed out, “living on in the memory of others” isn’t actually living at all. It’s feeding the worms with one’s flesh."

No specific poem of Browning could be located with this exact line. What poem is being referenced?

Not a poem. It was something he pointed out in one of his essays, actually. And I was paraphrasing the idea, rather than using his exact words. Exact repetition wasn’t the point, because I wasn’t invoking him as an authority, and the idea is manifestly true in any case.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Easy does it, I was hoping to read from the source.

[Dubious]

Are you going to actually answer the question? Or are you now deciding you had no idea what you were really asking?

...since that's what you really want to believe, be my guest! I already expressed myself in detail. No more!

Your “detail” didn’t include any articulation of what your criticism of God actually was. It was an easy question, and I even helped you parse your own language to arrive at a partial answer…but you couldn’t finish the job?

I think you could, if you were willing to self-analyze. But since I can’t do that for you, I have to accept your refusal to say more, I guess.

Here's an easy answer, since you still didn't get the message, which needs no self-analyses but simply a statement of fact which is beyond your control to consider or recognize...

God is an invented entity which permits everything and controls nothing; a belief commodity having absolutely no value in a world which incorporates fact more than any sacred gospel of truth...whose existence, actual or imagined, has credence only within the ethos of a false ideology. It's sole purpose, its executive force, if there were such, is to be employed as an instrument of power causing any god inference to be employed as a secular resource. Almost all the motives for any such god creation enterprise are based on human desires, which are more often deviant and dangerous than godlike.

For example, if you weren't so chickenshit about not making it into heaven, you'd dispense with the bible completely as having no value where your future is concerned...a highly understandable secular concern!

Have I made it clear or are you still confused?

[Immanuel Can]

...since that's what you really want to believe, be my guest! I already expressed myself in detail. No more!

Your “detail” didn’t include any articulation of what your criticism of God actually was. It was an easy question, and I even helped you parse your own language to arrive at a partial answer…but you couldn’t finish the job?

I think you could, if you were willing to self-analyze. But since I can’t do that for you, I have to accept your refusal to say more, I guess.

Here's an easy answer, since you still didn't get the message, which needs no self-analyses but simply a statement of fact which is beyond your control to consider or recognize...

It doesn’t answer my question. It’s just a free-form rant, without any reason, logic or evidence.

Have I made it clear or are you still confused?

The answer to that is obvious. You didn’t mean anything, because you can’t even explain the basis of your own complaint. You were just whining.

Disappointing? A bit. Expected? Yes.

[Dubious]

Your “detail” didn’t include any articulation of what your criticism of God actually was. It was an easy question, and I even helped you parse your own language to arrive at a partial answer…but you couldn’t finish the job?

I think you could, if you were willing to self-analyze. But since I can’t do that for you, I have to accept your refusal to say more, I guess.

Here's an easy answer, since you still didn't get the message, which needs no self-analyses but simply a statement of fact which is beyond your control to consider or recognize...

It doesn’t answer my question.

Yes, it does to perfection. You just don't like the answer...as expected.

Let me repeat in case you missed this part since you didn't quote it....

God is an invented entity which permits everything and controls nothing; a belief commodity having absolutely no value in a world which incorporates fact more than any sacred gospel of truth...whose existence, actual or imagined, has credence only within the ethos of a false ideology. It's sole purpose, its executive force, if there were such, is to be employed as an instrument of power causing any god inference to be employed as a secular resource. Almost all the motives for any such god creation enterprise are based on human desires, which are more often deviant and dangerous than godlike.

For example, if you weren't so chickenshit about not making it into heaven, you'd dispense with the bible completely as having no value where your future is concerned...a highly understandable secular concern!

[Alexis Jacobi]

Right now, maybe, you’re staking it on secularism. Or maybe it’s on no more than “I don’t want to think about it.” I can’t say. You can. But if it’s on secularism, bear in mind that secularism, of all the options, offers you no win. If it’s right, you’ll never know it is; if it’s wrong, you will.

Better to choose a different option, then. But choose wisely. Your eternal soul depends on your choice.

There is very certainly another option. Let us suppose that the soul is real, exists. And let us suppose that, somehow, here we all are in a world, this world. Let us suppose that our “immortal soul” not only exists, but cannot but exist. Simply because what “soul” is, is a fragment of the same being that is said to be “God”. True, we have a helluva time explaining existence, in perishable shells, in this weird world, suffering and joyous as we may be.

Once on realizes “I exist” and once one does sense Eternity, there something opens to a man. Certainly the value of life, but also life as an opportunity.

It may be not so much that Gary does not want to think about it, but rather that the Story that is his (our) cultural inheritance (the one IC tells) is simply too limited. We may well live again and again and again. But from whence this dark and dreary tale of eternal punishment in a hell-realm? What if this life now is our “just deserts” (“the punishment and the reward that one deserves”)? What if we visualized life here and now as our “spiritual world” and as the best that could be offered to us?

Your eternal soul…is eternal and nothing can change that. However, how we live now has determining power over how we will eventually live again.

This is of course not the Christian model, it is the Vedic model. It is far more ample and allows for more possibility than the limited Christian model.

In the Vedic model we are indeed enclosed within this reality. We are limited in it and by it. But there are both better and worse places we could be.

If we work on our now and our self, that is the key to progress.

The need for realization is similarly acute as in IC’s ultra-paranoid model, but really the entire mood is different. Life is bountiful even if tragic. But it is not destined to crush you, or mercilessly and cruelly torture and punish your soul in rehearsals of unending vengeance.

[Dubious]

Are you going to actually answer the question? Or are you now deciding you had no idea what you were really asking?

A note in passing: this is a standard manoeuvre for our dear IC: to select a question and then imperiously demand that it be answered.

It's a technique consistently applied by intellectual cowards. It goes like this...

By attempting to personalize a question which doesn't follow his agenda, no matter how impersonal or mismatched it is, he attempts to make it fallible, solely vulnerable to opinion and thus, as intended, negatable. It's a sneaky form of ad hominem through intentional distortion.

When one personalizes an objectively encountered truth that one is desperate to negate, it is with the intent of diminishing its truth content, replacing it with one's own. The IC types will forever insist, as he's done a thousand times, that whenever he's incapable of resolving a question or debating it in good faith by challenging it directly, he will protest, and keep protesting it was never answered when, in fact it obviously was, a number of times. He will seldom argue with the reply or disagree with it; he will simply say it was never replied to and therefore offered no justification or argument that could be discussed.

One invariable proof of that is, when quoting, he purposely omits the very centre of the argument against which he's incapable of arguing or impossible to argue with. Much easier to simply insist there was no such convergence. It's a long-practiced habit whether it be by theists or atheists.

[Immanuel Can]

Here's an easy answer, since you still didn't get the message, which needs no self-analyses but simply a statement of fact which is beyond your control to consider or recognize...

It doesn’t answer my question.

Yes, it does to perfection.

So either you don’t understand the question, or you’re afraid of the question. That’s all I can conclude.

Let me repeat in case you missed this part since you didn't quote it....

God is an invented entity which permits everything and controls nothing; a belief commodity having absolutely no value in a world which incorporates fact more than any sacred gospel of truth...whose existence, actual or imagined, has credence only within the ethos of a false ideology. It's sole purpose, its executive force, if there were such, is to be employed as an instrument of power causing any god inference to be employed as a secular resource. Almost all the motives for any such god creation enterprise are based on human desires, which are more often deviant and dangerous than godlike.

For example, if you weren't so chickenshit about not making it into heaven, you'd dispense with the bible completely as having no value where your future is concerned...a highly understandable secular concern!

Why repeat it? It was devoid of interest or substantive content. Screeds are fun, maybe; but they convince no intelligent reader.

I reallly don’t know what you’re doing on a philosophy site.

[Dubious]

It doesn’t answer my question.

Yes, it does to perfection.

So either you don’t understand the question, or you’re afraid of the question. That’s all I can conclude.

Let me repeat in case you missed this part since you didn't quote it....

God is an invented entity which permits everything and controls nothing; a belief commodity having absolutely no value in a world which incorporates fact more than any sacred gospel of truth...whose existence, actual or imagined, has credence only within the ethos of a false ideology. It's sole purpose, its executive force, if there were such, is to be employed as an instrument of power causing any god inference to be employed as a secular resource. Almost all the motives for any such god creation enterprise are based on human desires, which are more often deviant and dangerous than godlike.

For example, if you weren't so chickenshit about not making it into heaven, you'd dispense with the bible completely as having no value where your future is concerned...a highly understandable secular concern!

Why repeat it? It was devoid of interest or substantive content. Screeds are fun, maybe; but they convince no intelligent reader.

I reallly don’t know what you’re doing on a philosophy site.

I think most here were wondering that about you!

You have no implicit belief in the bible as such; that much is clear. Your posts to Gary prove it. To you, it amounts to nothing more than a fear-driven opportunistic belief to insure your future in an afterlife...just in case the bible is right.

But in case there is a god, do you imagine it to be so stupid it wouldn't notice your sordid hypocrisy? If god were just, he would sooner let in a humble atheist, such as my repentant self, than a miserable, loathsome, lying contortionist who only acknowledges god as a pimp he must please for any future satisfaction.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Bravo!

As for IC lying for the truth, par for the course of his religion's psychopathology. The lie is in his delusion of judging your presence on a philosophy site, when he demonstrates no philosophy whatsoever, bar the colloquial.

And he's completely innocent in this, a casualty of evolution along with billions. The single greatest proof of evolution in that they're trapped in disbelieving. What a tragic cosmic joke!

Whatever is said first, coalesces first, in invincible ignorance, is the truth.

[Gary Childress]

Only to show deference to your position, not to imply my own. It’s only you who is saying you’re unsure.

I’m only showing you what makes sense. When you find yourself in a position in which there is not even a possible win for you, you might want to rethink that position.

So if someone tells us that their God's Hell is twice as bad as Yahweh's and that their God requires human sacrifices and that not observing their God's wishes will result in being condemned to that Hell, should I observe that God "just in case", you know, as a precaution to avoid that God's greater punishment?

Here’s how it’s going to play out, Gary:

Not buying it. Maybe try selling something else.