Philosophy Now Forum

You understand so little, Immanuel. This renders you absolutely perfect for all of this.

When we study you, Pious Immanuel, we study a man who has crafted for himself an absolute fortress of thorough conviction. There is zero doubt, ever. You have found and built the castle of yourself on unassailable, pure certainty. The Stories you invest in are not stories. Like Adam & Eve in the Garden they cannot be else but true and precise pictures of real events and people. This bible literalism — that you manage it — is simply extraordinary. Indeed fantastic.

And people with your view, this way of seeing, are coming more and more out of the woodwork and seek to imprint their views on the social body. I am not saying this is absolutely bad (though it is weird). I say it is ‘highly problematic’ and troubling.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 11:59 pm When we study you, Pious Immanuel, we study a man who has crafted for himself an absolute fortress of thorough conviction. There is zero doubt, ever. You have found and built the castle of yourself on unassailable, pure certainty. The Stories you invest in are not stories. Like Adam & Eve in the Garden they cannot be else but true and precise pictures of real events and people. This bible literalism — that you manage it — is simply extraordinary. Indeed fantastic.

And people with your view, this way of seeing, are coming more and more out of the woodwork and seek to imprint their views on the social body. I am not saying this is absolutely bad (though it is weird). I say it is ‘highly problematic’ and troubling.

Again...so much talk...so little worth hearing.

No really, I do not think (what I call) your ‘attainment’ is a minor thing and it is definitely worth pointing out, talking about.

Absolute conviction. Belief that presents itself as standing up to anyone, to any assault, and in an age of undermining doubt, of lack of certainty, of shifting conviction.

Your belief transcends the science-revolution that overturned entire orders. In fact ‘science’ in your system is not opposed to the metaphysics of faith in the Hebrew god and this worldview.

You present yourself scientifically and as an acute rationalist. You organize your entire presentation by way of a mathematical reasoning that you present as unassailable.

You speak back to doubting science and doubting Occidental philosophy and tell these that they have veered astray and that you have the ultimate unifying key that joins everything back into holistic union.

This is extraordinary. It’s actually incredible.

The bizarre thing, from my angle, is that within certain very real limits of agreement, I try to explain you to those functionally incapable of understanding you, by clarifying the metaphysical tenets directing your belief. And you growl and spit upon me!

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Oct 24, 2025 3:30 am No really, I do not think...

There. You finally said something we should believe.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 8:43 pm

Walker wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 8:16 pm I tell ya IC, you're a true Christian with great patience for foolishness.

I'm nothing special, Walker.

Reason, logic, evidence...they're the stuff of honest dialogue. Honest dialogue is always favourable to Theism. That's why Atheism relies so heavily on unsubstantiable claims, unreason, illogic, and various forms of abuse, such as ad hominems, false analogies, unfair allegations, reductios, unearned postures of superiority, ridicule, and so forth. When one has nothing else in hand, one resorts to such measures, if one is loath to give up one's position.

So why get upset? Cool, polite reason favours Theism. And those strategies the Atheists favour are merely unethical, irrational and indicative of nervousness.

Yes, but while it may give you satisfaction in presenting clarifications, the obvious feedback from rational explanations offers no evidence of interrupting the continuity of delusion in those hell-bent on trashing Christianity under the cover of atheism or agnosticism, or just plain ignorance, which is not honest dialogue.

It's not upset, but rather, a wondering about the motivation for intellectually coddling. Is it out of respect for the pearls you offer that get turned into offal?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 2:43 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 9:41 amYou cannot prove your god exists,

Let's see. What will you accept as proof for the existence of God?

Show me your proof, and I will accept it. The difference between you and I is not that you have proof, it is that you have faith.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 2:43 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 9:41 amI don't claim to know that there is no god,

Then you're not an Atheist (or atheist) at all. You're an agnostic. It's there in your own wording: "I don't claim to know..." That, definitionally, is agnostic, because "a+gnosis" means "not+know."

Well if that's how you do your sums "a+theist" means "not+theist", which describes me perfectly.
Here is an actual definition of:
agnosticism, (from Greek agnōstos, “unknowable”), strictly speaking, the doctrine that humans cannot know of the existence of anything beyond the phenomena of their experience. The term has come to be equated in popular parlance with skepticism about religious questions in general and in particular with the rejection of traditional Christian beliefs under the impact of modern scientific thought.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/agnosticism
That is not my position, so no, I am not an agnostic.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 2:43 pmYou can stop defending Atheism, therefore. You aren't one.

At no point have I tried to defend "Atheism". As I said, you and your "Atheist" are both labouring under the delusion that you can prove your proposition.

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 1:34 pm

Age wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 1:16 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 9:41 am
So you agree that their explanation for how the world came to be is nonsense.
Not true; all the big bang hypothesis demonstrates is that the visible universe, the bit we can actually see, appears to have sprung into being about 13.8 billion years ago, and has been expanding ever since. Few cosmologists are rash enough to insist there were no previous conditions in which this event took place. The main failing of Lawrence Krauss's book 'A Universe from Nothing', is that he equates relativistic quantum fields with nothing, which they clearly are not. It is just one hypothesis, but if the basic premise is tenable, I have no problem with anyone who wishes to call one or more quantum fields 'god'; if that was all there was, they were everywhere and capable of anything and, in fact, the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that anything that could happen does. A god that creates every possible world is vastly more "Supreme" than yours who could only manage one, clearly flawed world.

1. Why do you perceive and claim that 'the world' is flawed?

2. What is the word, 'world', referring to exactly?

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 9:41 am As it happens, Alvin Plantinga evokes possible worlds in his hopeless ontological argument:

A being has maximal excellence in a given possible world W if and only if it is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good in W; and

A being has maximal greatness if it has maximal excellence in every possible world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_argument
If that is true, then a god that only appears in one possible world isn't maximally great. Your god is too small to be what you believe it to be, and the reasons given for why such a god is so withered are bullshit.

What we have found out, that the ancients didn't know, is that if the biblical account of creation is the word of God, then God talks bollocks.

Just like those who claim/ed the earth is flat, is in the centre of the Universe, and/or the Universe began and/or is expanding are also talking so-called 'bollocks'.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 9:41 am
No really. You cannot prove your god exists, any more than an "Atheist" can prove it doesn't. You are both labouring under fundamentally the same delusion.
Well, as an atheist, rather than an "Atheist", I don't claim to know that there is no god, so find an "Atheist" and ask them for "evidentiary warrant".

The very reason you two, here, have not uncovered what they actual Truth is, exactly, is because you two, still, have not even discussed what the definition for the 'God' word is, yet. your own personal versions of God are clearly both ridiculous.

Age, the usual way to understand what somebody means by a word is the context of the utterance. Still, I agree it's helpful for posters to provide a definition of their terms.

you appear to be claiming that you understand what they mean by the word, 'God', in the context of when they uttered the word, 'God'. So, what did both of them mean, exactly?

The absolute pointlessness and uselessness of 'trying to' argue over things like whether God exists or not without ever coming to an agreed upon and accepted definition for the word, 'God', first, has been irrefutably proved over and over, again and again, for the last couple of thousand or so years.

Yet, here are you human beings, still, doing the exact same thing.

It has been said before, 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results', but who of you really listens, in Life?

Proving God exists, or does not exist, is a Truly very simple and very easy thing to do. That is, once you know how to and you use the 'right' words.

One day you posters, here, will 'catch one' and 'catch up'.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 11:59 pm When we study you, Pious Immanuel, we study a man who has crafted for himself an absolute fortress of thorough conviction. There is zero doubt, ever. You have found and built the castle of yourself on unassailable, pure certainty. The Stories you invest in are not stories. Like Adam & Eve in the Garden they cannot be else but true and precise pictures of real events and people. This bible literalism — that you manage it — is simply extraordinary. Indeed fantastic.

And people with your view, this way of seeing, are coming more and more out of the woodwork and seek to imprint their views on the social body. I am not saying this is absolutely bad (though it is weird). I say it is ‘highly problematic’ and troubling.

Capability for adaptation is how sapiens became the most mighty species in many ways. Immanuel was not born unable to adapt as he clearly has a good brain with no perceptible lesions.

IC is a good example of the difference between the Western and Eastern traditions. The Western religious mind—especially in its Protestant evangelical form—was shaped by centuries of valuing willpower, mastery, and certainty over surrender. What Islam calls Taslīm—the peaceful acceptance of divine order—the evangelical often mistakes for weakness or doubt. His faith becomes a lifelong effort to hold reality still, to defend truth rather than rest in it. Yet beneath that certainty lies anxiety: the fear that letting go would mean losing God, when in fact Taslīm may be the only way to truly trust Him.

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Oct 24, 2025 10:25 am IC is a good example of the difference between the Western and Eastern traditions. The Western religious mind—especially in its Protestant evangelical form—was shaped by centuries of valuing willpower, mastery, and certainty over surrender.

Obviously I have had long interactions with Immanuel. Years back now we used to exchange quite civil PMs at the time when I, for a group of personal reasons, gave credence to the Christian (evangelical-type) believer. But time and again when running into IC’s ultimately condemning religious philosophy where subservience to this entity he calls “Jesus Christ” is demanded by his visualization of “God” and bolstered by what I now understand to be an Hebraic intolerance of any concept that it does not direct and control, I realized how destructive this is. (Though there is a duality in this).

It therefore became obvious to me that for all that Christian social philosophy and Catholic social doctrine (and so much of Christian philosophy in so many different areas in our intellectual world) holds literal treasures and should never be dismissed, it is this conniving, underhanded, psychologically manipulative ‘apologetics’ that must be confronted.

In this exact sense the false-front of self-satisfied piousness for all that it feigns humility (Walker in his drunken processes and his partially thought out manner pointed to this) must in fact be mercilessly opposed and in glorious ad hominem — its ultimate iteration — this specific Christian who presents as Immanuel Can must be “fed to the lions”. Or as I say “burnt at the stake”. That “stake” and a valuable immolation can be achieved intellectually. This type of belief is a defect of consciousness and awareness.

So while I will admit that there do exist within Islam elevated souls with deep inner experience, simultaneously there are extremely aggressive low-level believers who would rather see you dead (or in hell) than to live successfully as an “Atheist”.

Until IC bends his knee to a transcendent truth and confesses his inner defect he will receive unending beatings at the hand of superior ideas.

One useful lens to examine IC’s evangelistic position is to see it as an expression of Judaism’s essential will to domination. I know that any criticism of Judaism is perilous these days, but it must be realized that Christianity is infected with a conquering, dominating spirit. This must be confronted. And as I say to the exact degree that IC refuses to bend his knees and confess his arrogancias to the entire group, and to grovel for forgiveness, is the degree that he demands continued spiritual torture. I have the medicine. I have the spoon. His mouth must be opened with a vice of Truth. And he must welcome the path to psychological healing that I alone can administer …

No mercy, Immanuel.

I say it plainly and it is entirely coherent: Immanuel Can must be ‘studied’. Mere opposition is insufficient. It is precisely “the man” who has been created by social and intellectual processes of this order who must be confronted. His primary weapon is, as has been made obvious, the threat of hell. His argument and his apologetics begins, and ends, on that note. That is in fact all there is.

“Jesus” himself, and certainly “God” himself (to the degree that these can even be defined in our present in coherent manner) sides with Alexis Jacobi on these points.

centuries of valuing willpower, mastery, and certainty

The cutting tools have their place, I have no doubt about this. But the object to be cut has shifted. And the tools must adapt.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 8:43 pm I'm nothing special, Walker.

But you are, you are indeed. You present yourself as the True Christian. You are, as you make clear, protected under the very wing of Jesus and God himself. You know the truth. You can explain it in thoroughly clear mathematical terms, just as if presenting a Euclidian proof. You explain that there is one God, one Revelation, and effectively one means and method to the Ultimate Bounty. And finally, in just a little while, you’ll be striding along the banks & braces of Heavenly Eternity — while the rest of us to a man will be writhing in the hell-realm you are adamant in predicting for us.

I would say that this lends you a certain specialness at least among this group.

Do you genuinely see it differently?

Walker wrote: ↑Fri Oct 24, 2025 4:58 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 8:43 pm

Walker wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 8:16 pm I tell ya IC, you're a true Christian with great patience for foolishness.

I'm nothing special, Walker.

Reason, logic, evidence...they're the stuff of honest dialogue. Honest dialogue is always favourable to Theism. That's why Atheism relies so heavily on unsubstantiable claims, unreason, illogic, and various forms of abuse, such as ad hominems, false analogies, unfair allegations, reductios, unearned postures of superiority, ridicule, and so forth. When one has nothing else in hand, one resorts to such measures, if one is loath to give up one's position.

So why get upset? Cool, polite reason favours Theism. And those strategies the Atheists favour are merely unethical, irrational and indicative of nervousness.

Yes, but while it may give you satisfaction in presenting clarifications, the obvious feedback from rational explanations offers no evidence of interrupting the continuity of delusion in those hell-bent on trashing Christianity under the cover of atheism or agnosticism, or just plain ignorance, which is not honest dialogue.

It's not upset, but rather, a wondering about the motivation for intellectually coddling. Is it out of respect for the pearls you offer that get turned into offal?

Oh, I wasn't suggesting you are upset...merely that I'm not. And I hope I'm not "coddling" anybody. But you do make a good point about the limits of debate; if your interlocutor is unthoughtful, it can become a "pearls-and-swine" kind of experience.

I have my own goal in all this, one that has less to do with getting obdurate opponents to cave, and nothing at all to do with humiliating them. I'm trying to inform myself about whether or not they have anything to say that I haven't already heard. So it's more about what the process does for me, than about any impulse to "one up" somebody else. With that goal in mind, there's not a lot one can't endure.

I think the worst thing about the abuse and ad hominems that I feel is that they're boring. They don't unsettle me, but they are just wasted space. When somebody lapses into those kinds of things, I draw two conclusions: one, that they sense they're losing the point and are becoming petty, and two, that they have nothing more to offer, and so have lapsed into the irrelevant -- so I may as well move on.

But none of it troubles me. Abuse is just what people do when they're losing.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 24, 2025 2:15 pm

Very clear, and greatly appreciated.