Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

Let's review what's gone on here.

I wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Apr 11, 2022 4:29 am
Tell me what you'll accept, and I'll see what I can give you.

You answered:

Over and over and over again: evidence that the Christian God does in fact exist on par with evidence that Popes do in fact occupy the Vatican.

I said that I found this very odd evidence to ask for. In the first place, it seemed to me to prove nothing...and in the second, it was the sort of thing that's so easy to prove you don't even need me to do it for you.

Nevertheless, I honoured your demand. You said you'd accept "evidence that the Christian God exists on par with the Popes being in the Vatican."

So I wrote:

Just as the Pope lived in Rome, so too Jesus is recognized by every significant historian as having lived in ancient Judea. That's a simple, historical fact.

And your reply?

What?! As though establishing historical evidence that someone calling himself Jesus Christ existed back then is "half way" toward establishing that he is both the Son of God and God Himself. And, uh, whatever the hell the Holy Ghost is? ...And few doubt the historical existence of Muhammad.

So you asked for evidence. I asked you what evidence you would accept. You said you'd except the kind of evidence above.

But now, you say that's not good enough. You say "What"? You say it establishes nothing you will believe. Which, ironically, was exactly what I said...that doesn't seem good enough evidence.

So now we're back to my original question: What evidence WILL you accept?

So far, apparently, you've only told me what you WON'T accept.

What would be good enough evidence for you?

[Immanuel Can]

Nietzsche understood the bible better than you ever possibly could!

Oh dear...

Poor, deluded person. If only you had any idea.

Never mind.

[Dontaskme]

But I only know my own logic...

There's no such thing. That's like saying, "I only know my own mathematics."

If it's only "your own," it's no logic at all.

I only know myself..I cannot know others. Myself means all that I know, including the logic of what I know.

I see you have walked away from this conversation IC ..is it too incoherent for you, too deep maybe?

What I want to know from you...is how is 'logical reasoning' not 'your own' knowing? .. because that's what you have implied here in your response.

If knowing is not 'your own' knowing, then I'm assuming knowing is not 'human knowing'...is that what you are saying?

Is what you are talking about on this forum, not 'your own' knowing IC? ...if not, can you explain why it is not?

I'm really intrigued and curious ..thanks.

If you are going to walk the walk, then you really need to talk the talk...and stop running away...it's disrespectful to trash an understanding as incoherent, when it's clearly coherent to the knower.

[Dontaskme]

Apparently there are no Christians on this thread. I began a post asking if any here believe in the Resurrection of Christ? No responses so no Christians. St Paul gave a good description in which he said if not true, believers are to be the most pitied. A person can believe by blind faith but are there those Christians who can verify at least theoretically how it fits in with the workings of our universe as a necessity?

If there is no Resurrection of the Christ, there is no Christianity since the Resurrection is an imaginary creation

Humans have been programmed to believe WORDS have literal real meaning... The meaning of the word ''Resurrection'' states that the man named Jesus Christ who is believed to have died on the cross..came back to life.


So my question to you Nick is...are we supposed to be obliged to just go along with that belief as if it was actually true?

Lets talk about the grass root idea that there is such an event known as a dead human being coming back to life.

[Dubious]

Nietzsche understood the bible better than you ever possibly could!

Oh dear...

Poor, deluded person. If only you had any idea.

Never mind.

Nietzsche understood the bible better than you ever possibly could!

Oh dear...

Poor, deluded person. If only you had any idea.

Never mind.

Obviously you don't otherwise you could have made a far better argument! Doubtless, if you could have made an argument which amounts to one more substantial than less than nothing, you certainly would have been happy to.

Here's the link...for those who are interested...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/97 ... ty.6?seq=1

The quote is on page 48. Let others decide who is deluded.

The chapter as a whole is exceptionally stimulating, re the history and interfaces of the OT, NT, Greek culture, Judaism and Christianity, especially as written by a Jew who doesn't have an axe to grind.

But this does not refer to you in any way being much too complicated. All you need to know is what you always espouse, namely believe in Jesus and your soul will be saved; if not, be damned. "That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”, to quote Keats to save your wimpy, repellent little soul and give it a warm home forever! HALLELUJAH!

Talk about being deluded!

[Belinda]

Apparently there are no Christians on this thread. I began a post asking if any here believe in the Resurrection of Christ? No responses so no Christians. St Paul gave a good description in which he said if not true, believers are to be the most pitied. A person can believe by blind faith but are there those Christians who can verify at least theoretically how it fits in with the workings of our universe as a necessity?

If there is no Resurrection of the Christ, there is no Christianity since the Resurrection is an imaginary creation

Everything St Paul, you, or I conceive of is an 'imaginary' creation. Some people have better imaginations than others.

[Dubious]

A person can believe by blind faith but are there those Christians who can verify at least theoretically how it fits in with the workings of our universe as a necessity?

Entropy would seem to make that an impossibility, but imagination has the power to grant any impossibility a probable cause. That's how we populate our garden with all the various colors of meaning.

...but like a fable bruised by thunder, it was a dream that told a lie!

[Alexis Jacobi]

A clarification. The earliest Christians, the associates of Jesus, did not ‘believe in’ the resurrection they experienced it.

My understanding has always been that this happened, that it was real.

The point I make (and I work in a different area than others in this conversation) is that when ‘the resurrection’ is evoked, for me, it is evoked in my imagination, my imagined space. I. e. projected onto the wall of the cave.

What is implied? Turning around to understand it. How? Through intellectus.

The faculty of thought. As understood in Catholic philosophical literature it signifies the higher, spiritual, cognitive power of the soul. It is in this view awakened to action by sense, but transcends the latter in range. Amongst its functions are attention, conception, judgment, reasoning, reflection, and self-consciousness. All these modes of activity exhibit a distinctly suprasensuous element, and reveal a cognitive faculty of a higher order than is required for mere sense-cognitions. In harmony, therefore, with Catholic usage, we reserve the terms intellect, intelligence, and intellectual to this higher power and its operations, although many modern psychologists are wont, with much resulting confusion, to extend the application of these terms so as to include sensuous forms of the cognitive process. By thus restricting the use of these terms, the inaccuracy of such phrases as "animal intelligence" is avoided. Before such language may be legitimately employed, it should be shown that the lower animals are endowed with genuinely rational faculties, fundamentally one in kind with those of man. Catholic philosophers, however they differ on minor points, as a general body have held that intellect is a spiritual faculty depending extrinsically, but not intrinsically, on the bodily organism. The importance of a right theory of intellect is twofold: on account of its bearing on epistemology, or the doctrine of knowledge; and because of its connexion with the question of the spirituality of the soul.

If I am going to the hell realm for my crime can I at least request a seat next to the door to the outside??!!

The condemned can make requests, right?!?

[Dontaskme]

If I am going to the hell realm for my crime can I at least request a seat next to the door to the outside??!!

The condemned can make requests, right?!?

Rest assured the only place you will ever know for certain is this place right here and now where you already are.There is no other place...thank God.

Hell and Heaven is just another fancy way of saying if I do bad, I feel bad, and if I do good, I feel good...it's no big deal, even a child knows it's better to feel good than to feel bad, and that's why children have no agenda to harm others, knowing it only makes themself and the other feel bad which is traumatic to a child.

And is why adults who fight with each other say lets not do this in front of the children.

Most adults today are the result of generational child abuse which is left unhealed.

No child is born a sinner.

.

[promethean75]

"But speculation isn't worth very much, is it? And it lasts only as long as no data are brought into the question."

But check this out though. I noted that the empiricist approach (like the above) is either completely forgotten or foregoed in the following kinds of claims:

"The earliest Christians, the associates of Jesus, did not ‘believe in’ the resurrection they experienced it." - A. Jacobi

An empiricist approach here would advise us that it's much easier to believe the resurrection story is a fiction than to believe a dead person actually came back to life (in the manner described in the bible).

We've never directly experienced a dead person coming back to life, but we experience people making up stories like this all the time.

[Iwannaplato]

We've never directly experienced a dead person coming back to life, but we experience people making up stories like this all the time.

I am not arguing in favor of ressurection, but this struck me as odd.
I have never experienced anyone making up a story like that. I should get out more.

[promethean75]

I mean we have read, read about, heard about or experienced directly, (known) persons making supernatural claims of the like, all through history.

But we've never experienced a person coming back from the dead. Least I haven't.

Verily, the plausibility of the claim is significantly reduced because of this.

This kind of stuff passes in Christianity because it is already granted that the doctrine is true, the word of 'god', etc. If a story about a resurrection is included in the bible, it has to be true, because the Bible is true. One needs no more evidence than that to conclude that the resurrection in the story most likely really happened.

Or, such a claim will be called by some set of Christian theologists, only allegory, metaphor and myth making... not a literal account of actual events.

Question here is, how do you decide which parts are to be called allegorical, metaphorical, etc., and which parts literal descriptions of actual events?

Cherry picking, bro. I'm sayin.

[Immanuel Can]

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/97 ... ty.6?seq=1
The quote is on page 48. Let others decide who is deluded.

Well, like you, nobody really can.

For however much we may surmise Nietzsche might have known about Christanity -- which was certainly not much -- you haven't the foggiest idea how much I might know.

It's hard to compare two things when you have no idea about at least one of them.

So you have no grounds for comparison. But I've read Nietzsche, and I've seen what he thinks, and I can tell you that the poor sap really didn't have a clue.

However, he was hell-on-wheels on Atheism. I have to grant him that. He understood where that went.

[Immanuel Can]

"But speculation isn't worth very much, is it? And it lasts only as long as no data are brought into the question."

But check this out though. I noted that the empiricist approach (like the above) is either completely forgotten or foregoed in the following kinds of claims:"The earliest Christians, the associates of Jesus, did not ‘believe in’ the resurrection they experienced it." - A. Jacobi

That's actually manifestly false. They did both, of course.

And you can tell, for various reasons. One is that had it been false, it could have been falsified instantly, by the Romans simply producing the body. Secondly, there were so many people in Jerusalem during that feast that there would literally have been thousands of contrary witnesses. The disciples were preaching the resurrection in Jerusalem, days after the event -- without being contradicted as to the basic facts of the death of Christ. Moreoever, the disciples not only continued to preach the resurrection, but some of them died for it, and died quite horribly -- a thing you would never do for something you knew, all along, tha you has simply made up.

There really isn't any doubt they believed it. The question is, "Why did they believe it so strongly that they lived to preach it, got flogged and ostracized from their society and even died for it?" That takes some explaining, for sure.

An empiricist approach here would advise us that it's much easier to believe the resurrection story is a fiction than to believe a dead person actually came back to life (in the manner described in the bible).

I think that's not true: but it depends what you mean by "empiricism." If you include history, the evidence is overwhelmingly in favour. If you mean, "I don't see it today," then it has to be a pretty silly objection.

I don't see Napoleon or Charlemagne today, either. It doesn't mean they are "empirically" implausible.

We've never directly experienced a dead person coming back to life,

If you had, it wouldn't even be a miracle. And it would testify to nothing at all, then.

So what did you expect?

[Dubious]

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/97 ... ty.6?seq=1
The quote is on page 48. Let others decide who is deluded.

Well, like you, nobody really can.

For however much we may surmise Nietzsche might have known about Christanity -- which was certainly not much -- you haven't the foggiest idea how much I might know.

It's hard to compare two things when you have no idea about at least one of them.

So you have no grounds for comparison. But I've read Nietzsche, and I've seen what he thinks, and I can tell you that the poor sap really didn't have a clue.

However, he was hell-on-wheels on Atheism. I have to grant him that. He understood where that went.

Oh, you mean as compared to thinking that Jesus is going to save your soul because you believe in him, which would hardly be credible these days by any reasonably intelligent person outgrowing puberty?

The only thing you know about the bible is how to quote it, which any idiot who forced his brain into a straight-jacket can do.

In short, poor sap, you're not required to know more since nothing more is allowed in!