Philosophy Now Forum

artisticsolution wrote:As a child, I was indoctrinated with Christianity. I was brainwashed, pure and simple. Now that brainwashing, coupled with the fact that when I became aware of right and wrong, I had a desire to understand myself, in relationship to God. I think most Christians do this...in their own minds. Try to sort out what God is telling us. It has never left me entirely, and this is the thing atheists don't understand about Christians. That having faith is not our fault, nor is it us wanting to blow smoke up the atheists skirt. It just is...it is always present in our minds. The God thing is apart of us. And while I can't tell you my beliefs are true, as I don't know that they are...I might just have mental issues caused christian childhood trauma...I still pray to a God I don't know is there. everyday. Sometimes with gratitude and sometimes just with the lord's prayer. Please don't be like most atheists and be cynical or suspicious about that. I do not do it in an attempt to be better than anyone, or to guarantee me a spot in heaven or whatever else pisses off atheists. I do it simply because that is how my mind has been trained to think. I can't help it...it is ALWAYS present. Even if I can step aside and truthfully admit. I have not seen God. I don't know if there is a God. The feeling I have inside just might be a mental illness. I DON'T KNOW! All I know is I feel alone and the running conversation, in my head, makes me feel less alone. No reason or rhyme to it. It just does.

While I have not read all 35 pages of this thread, and certainly as IC knows, I am interested - continually interested - in the topic, it seems to me that anyone who desires to understand the Occident, and also our own selves, has to examine Christian belief. In this I have been consistent from the start (here on PN). However, it also seems pretty clear that one cannot stop with 'Christian belief' (the specific tenets of Christianity) but one has to put the whole question of religiosity on the table. And with that question one has to begin to define, in clear and cogent terms, the very nature of this place: the earth-realm. And ourselves in this realm.

This paragraph I selected, and I do not say this mean-spiritedly, is a mass of confusing notions. I say notions and not 'ideas'. I suggest that all of this has to be clarified. One would have to separate out each element and begin to work within a structure of definitions. Without that, it could not be said that one was really 'doing philosophy', nor really even 'doing theology', and one could not arrive at a solid and clear idea-structure around which to organise one's ethical, spiritual, moral, and emotional life. I further suggest that it is likely that this confused paragraph, its mix of sentimentalism, attachment to and immersion in half-baked ideas, is a very real problem not only for the writer of that paragraph, but for the Occidental world generally. Again, there is no mean-spiritedness here as I recognise good-heartedness and other non-intellectual qualities - human qualities basically - as often trumping well-ordered intellectual ideas and 'intellectualism'.

One might start with an attempt to clarify some of the terms:

1) 'I was indoctrinated with Christianity': There is no person who is not 'indoctrinated', no matter what culture they grow up in, no matter what point in history. We receive all of our mental constructs from our milieu, our parents, our society, and much of this comes in to us, or is installed in us, totally outside of personal choice. We do not have any choice at all about what we receive, we simply receive. And what we receive becomes the base of our 'operational perspective'. In the large sense then we are all 'brainwashed' even if it does not seem that we have been brainwashed.

1a) When you say 'brainwashed' you mean, I think, that you received a set of doctrines that were different - perhaps opposed to - that of the surrounding culture. Thus, you grew up and were raised up in a 'pocket'.

1b) One might also infer that those who 'indoctrinated' you filled you with conflicting ideas, half-baked ideas, admixtures of ideas that they had not really worked out, and that the whole mass of it, instead of clarifying, instead of providing a sane and solid tool (of idea and perception) with which to make your way through the world, gave you a confused, partial, self-conflicted and self-conflicting perceptual structure which - I further speculate - lead to crisis of faith.

2) 'I became aware of right and wrong': In such a spiritual, social, cultural, intellectual and theological mess - I suggest - it would be darned difficult to have any clear sense of 'right and wrong'. It would likely occur that one would open one's mouth and spout blather, that one would self-contradict, that one would give evidence of having no solid and established base from which to rationate on the topic. At the most basic and social level we live in a society with a solidly-defined jurisprudential system in which ideas about right and wrong are thought through painstakingly. Argued, debated, and decided on. At the other extreme - that of theology - a similar endeavour is enacted, and yet the topic deals on, essentially, speculations of man's relationship to a divine being (etc.) But to engage in this area, just as in jurisprudence, requires a clear mind, a prepared mind, not a randomly-organized topsy-turvy girlish mind. One might suggest that such a topsy-turvy mind must turn to an ordered mind to begin to sift through and order the confusion. Not an impossible task.

3) 'Understanding oneself in relation to God': the most demanding task that a man may set himself to!

4) 'I think most Christians do this': Well, if one were to base what one does, or what aspiration one has, on what 'most Christians do', it is possible to suggest that one would lose oneself before one had even begun! Cf: Kierkegaard's ideas of 'Christendom'.

4a) 'And while I can't tell you my beliefs are true, as I don't know that they are': Christians are just as everyone in the grip of virulent nihilism. A near-psychosis of confusion, of twisted ideas, or confused mind, and moral morass. True, this is a polemical statement and highly charged too. I say it like this to make a point, or to ask a question: Who can we rely on? What branch, what school, what philosophy department, what man, what woman, what nation, idea, or metaphysical platform?

4b) Christianity offers two levels of solution: One is a defined belief system that you only need to join yourself to. Could be your Church, could be a specific branch of Christianity. To link up with that is to indoctrinate/reindoctrinate oneself into a specific set of ideas. This offers great comfort and security. In one way or another all human beings seek the confort of an idea-system that provides to them a sense of right and wrong, good and bad, that defines duty & cowardice, and offers a defined path a person can follow. No part of this is necessarily 'religious quest', nor 'philosophy', nor stepping onto a path of treacherous and dangerous examination of 'social constructs' of a religious sort.

4c) The second level is what Christians predominantly describe as 'discipleship'. I suggest this is unique and I also suggest that other religious forms do not place emphasis on this. Discipleship means to stake out for oneself, in prayer and meditation, and also through a method shall we say of 'listening to the world', a relationship with a conscious, and a necessarily superior, entity or spirit. I suggest that there is a great deal of prattle on this theme but that at its most essential point there is something of deep significance here. To tune-in to one's own conscience, and to cultivate one's own conscience, to educate one's conscience, to feed it and to grow it.

5) 'What God is telling us': "Hoo-boy!..." (I quote Felasco here ...) Look on YouTube for those self-published videos by minor suburban saints who speak about their 'communion' with god, their hearing of 'god's voice', and the commands and commentaries they receive. It is interesting to note that in other religions the idea of an individual and personal communion with 'God' is not part of the picture. One learns what 'God' wants and one resolves how to do it in one's life. I suggest that there is a rather grave danger - a seductive attraction - to imagining that 'God' will speak to one. And yet how could a religious person, trained up in the Christian metaphysic, NOT understand things in these terms?

5a) It is possible, though I would not say that it is recommended, to sweep everything off the table when one begins to think about 'God'. I mean: doctrine, scripture, religious tracts, tacky religious kitsch (of a physical and of a mental sort), priests, gurus, movements, whole histories of man, and to significantly start anew. The Bible is a confused mass of strange psychosis, fantasy, projection, self-aggrandizement, with a psychotic madman Yahweh bellowing commands at power-hungry people. The NT a child's fairybook, an encapsulation of desperate phantasies that have never been true and will never be true and yet which capture and captivate successive generations. It is POSSIBLE to suggest that all this kitsch be tossed aside and a new examination of the questions undertaken:

• What is this place where we find ourselves?
• What is the purpose of my 'coming to exist here'?
• In what area (say, duty or pleasure) shall I focus myself?
• What REALLY is the metaphysical structure of this place?
• How can I find out about that?
• Where do I get 'real' information?
• Is it best to abandon all unverifiable notions of metaphysics? (Gods overseeing us, and even 'otherworlds' or 'postworlds'?)
  ... or not.
• What is consciousness? What is being? What does 'God' mean in all that? When we say 'God', What in the heck do we mean?

(This question list can go on ...)

6) 'The feeling I have inside just might be a mental illness': One thing to consider, and to consider deeply, is that in our present culture, and in the climate of the present, to be a religious person, to have that inclination, to feel that connection, is now being defined as mental illness! Our present culture has established as indicators of balance and sanity a whole group of activities and attitudes that it defines as indicating normalcy, and these are supported by social attitude, by public relations constructions, by attitude-demonstrations by teachers, authorities, politicians, entertainers and those who forge public opinion. While mental illness may be real, I suggest that to have a functioning and functional spirituality is not a symptom of mental illness. But mental confusion, disturbed and unsettled emotions, deep inner conflict, and other factors, may begin to feel like 'mental illness'. Also, in an environment where aberrations are held up as normalcy, there will operate a tendency to regard any attitude or speech which takes issue against those aberrations as 'sickness'. These (false) declarations of normalcy can function intellectually, sexually, interpersonally, politically, economically, and in all arenas of life. There are very powerful games - very serious games - being played to define normalcy, to define sanity, ethics and all else. Extremely powerful players, with vastly powerful PR tools are fighting in this realm, staking out the terms of normalcy, decency and all else. It is a game of deceit and manipulation.

Thank you, Gustav, for your interesting reply. No worries...I did not take your words as 'mean spirited'. I am happy to have a conversation with you, but I am incredibly tired as I have had a hectic few days getting things done. I will come back and reply properly soon. I don't expect you to read the whole entire thread, but if you could read my opening post on page one, it would help our conversation. After all, to be fair, that is what this thread is all about.

Anyway, welcome to the forum if I have not said it before!

artisiticsolution wrote:The reason I started this thread is because I believe devout Christians have not developed a strong moral compass and instead rely on the bible and their peers to tell them the difference between right and wrong. People who are not religious rely on their moral compass to discern right from wrong, I think.

It is very unlikely to change a Christian's belief about God, however, I think they can learn to develop a stronger moral compass that perhaps could help them realize that some of the things they are led to believe, are in fact, not in keeping with the whole point of Christianity, which is the belief in good against evil.

Obvious Leo wrote:This seems to be the central thrust of your thread and it is a point with which I agree wholeheartedly. Religious belief is fundamentally immoral because it transfers the burden of moral culpability for one's actions from the individual onto a non-existent being.

You suggested that I look over your first postings, and I had already done that. I would start with your first - totally erroneous - declaration. Let's start with the facts not the incorrect statement based in ignorance of Occidental philosophy and ethics. The fact is that "Christians" have access to perhaps the most sophisticated, and useful, and complete, and developed means of analysis of ethical and moral choices. Plato through Kant and well beyond to offer a brief reference. It is a system of thought and analysis that originated within Christian ideas generally, and is based on them (Christian humanism for example) but which, at various points, has significantly cut loose from a direct tie to a specific religious platform. Meaning that the ethics and the morality - the philosophising of these things - can be and is carried on independently of the religious structure and the specificity of 'faith'.

While there is a great deal of sophistication and depth in Buddhist and other Eastern religio-philosophical systems, it has not been developed to the degree that Occidental ethics and morality has. In fact there is no reason why the Occidental-based ethical system - a means of conducting a conversation in essence - cannot also function very well within Buddhist or Eastern ethics and morality. In fact it does just that. Occidental philosophy arises out of a Christian context, a Christian matrix, and so once again: to understand our own self, our own mind, we HAVE to gain significant background in Christian thinking. It will help (at least) to inhibit the spouting of mere stupidities which do not help at all.

Obvious Leo makes a more complex statement, but also one with some errors in it (IMO). I say the following: All belief reflects and offers a metaphysic: a way that life and existence are grasped and 'related to'. Thus, any belief system, and all perceptive structures, are in fact religious in the same way. That statement, to understand it, requires a metaphysician's grasp of 'intellectual world', 'conceptual world', 'idea world', and 'worldview'.

Once it is understood, whole new ways - productive ways - open to be able to understand just what we are doing when we devise explanatory metaphysical systems. The operative word is doing.

However, none of this is meant to mean that some religious structures of view of reality, and those that define terms, and propose and carry out praxis, are not and cannot be destructive and thus condemnable. The metaphysician's trick, or manoeuvre, is to see with clarity how we ourselves are operating a metaphysical imposition on reality (too).

The atheistic (though to be an atheist is not required for this) anti-religionist has lots of weaponry focussed on 'the other' but little metaphysical skill in turning his focussing lens back on himself, his structure of thought, and his matrix/context.

A reference work with relatively short essays on all manner of different topics related to Christian thought, which clearly demonstrates how our matrix of thought is Christian in essence, is The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:Occidental philosophy arises out of a Christian context, a Christian matrix, and so once again: to understand our own self, our own mind, we HAVE to gain significant background in Christian thinking. It will help (at least) to inhibit the spouting of mere stupidities which do not help at all.

Well I certainly don't wish to be ignorant. Thank you for a very thoughtful and helpful reply Mr. Bjornstrand. I ordered a used copy of the Oxford Companion to Christian Thought on the amazon link you provided. I guess that may help with an answer to one of the important questions you have posited:

•Where do I get 'real' information?

You will not regret it. It offers an extraordinary sweep of Occidental thought and concerns. Each essay names other sources. It's tip-top. I would certainly welcome hearing your thoughts later.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:You will not regret it. It offers an extraordinary sweep of Occidental thought and concerns. Each essay names other sources. It's tip-top. I would certainly welcome hearing your thoughts later.

I will most certainly take you up on your generous offer. I've read a few sections of the Bible in my life (forgotten most of what I read too), but never the whole thing. Unfortunately I don't do very well with primary sources, though. Not to say that the Bible is difficult to read but to me it just isn't as engaging as reading what modern scholars and commentators have to say about it. From what I gather on the Amazon reviews, it does sound like this book is a good and thoughtful source on what leading Christian intellectuals think about various topics. Definitely looking forward to it and of course getting your feedback on what I read.

artisticsolution wrote:As a child, I was indoctrinated with Christianity. I was brainwashed, pure and simple. Now that brainwashing, coupled with the fact that when I became aware of right and wrong, I had a desire to understand myself, in relationship to God. I think most Christians do this...in their own minds. Try to sort out what God is telling us. It has never left me entirely, and this is the thing atheists don't understand about Christians. That having faith is not our fault, nor is it us wanting to blow smoke up the atheists skirt. It just is...it is always present in our minds. The God thing is apart of us. And while I can't tell you my beliefs are true, as I don't know that they are...I might just have mental issues caused christian childhood trauma...I still pray to a God I don't know is there. everyday. Sometimes with gratitude and sometimes just with the lord's prayer. Please don't be like most atheists and be cynical or suspicious about that. I do not do it in an attempt to be better than anyone, or to guarantee me a spot in heaven or whatever else pisses off atheists. I do it simply because that is how my mind has been trained to think. I can't help it...it is ALWAYS present. Even if I can step aside and truthfully admit. I have not seen God. I don't know if there is a God. The feeling I have inside just might be a mental illness. I DON'T KNOW! All I know is I feel alone and the running conversation, in my head, makes me feel less alone. No reason or rhyme to it. It just does.

Gustav wrote: Again, there is no mean-spiritedness here as I recognise good-heartedness and other non-intellectual qualities - human qualities basically - as often trumping well-ordered intellectual ideas and 'intellectualism'.

Good...I am glad you are not going to be mean spirited, I don't think that's what God would want (if there is a God). I am happy to have a conversation with you, Gustav. But I am wondering why you are not discussing the topic of this thread "How To Tell Right From Wrong' and instead choose to discuss my personal beliefs. Interesting. Deflecting the issue...aww...what the hell...I'm in (at least until it gets repetitious).

One might start with an attempt to clarify some of the terms:

1) 'I was indoctrinated with Christianity': There is no person who is not 'indoctrinated', no matter what culture they grow up in, no matter what point in history. We receive all of our mental constructs from our milieu, our parents, our society, and much of this comes in to us, or is installed in us, totally outside of personal choice. We do not have any choice at all about what we receive, we simply receive. And what we receive becomes the base of our 'operational perspective'. In the large sense then we are all 'brainwashed' even if it does not seem that we have been brainwashed.

Well, true. What of it? Are you saying that since we all get indoctrinated' that abuse should be considered the norm? Are you able to differentiate a healthy upbringing from an unhealthy one? I happen to believe that certain brainwashings are fine, like for example, learning how to read and write. I think it is in a person's best interest to read and write...therefore learning how to read and write are "right" good and moral things to be taught. However, being taught that there is a good God who is going to make your friends, teachers, (etc...basically anyone your parents don't agree with) burn in a fiery hell for eternity is wrong, and it is dangerous to humanities well being. It teaches people to hate, to be suspicious and to be mean spirited.

1a) When you say 'brainwashed' you mean, I think, that you received a set of doctrines that were different - perhaps opposed to - that of the surrounding culture. Thus, you grew up and were raised up in a 'pocket'.

I was raised in an American Christian household that followed the sermons of Billy Graham. Hardly a 'pocket' as this was the biggest mainstream Christian that America knew at the time.

1b) One might also infer that those who 'indoctrinated' you filled you with conflicting ideas, half-baked ideas, admixtures of ideas that they had not really worked out, and that the whole mass of it, instead of clarifying, instead of providing a sane and solid tool (of idea and perception) with which to make your way through the world, gave you a confused, partial, self-conflicted and self-conflicting perceptual structure which - I further speculate - lead to crisis of faith.

Nope, my foundation of Christianity was sound...all God loves you...and warm hugs. It's when I became aware that I realized most Christians don't really believe that. Most Christains seem really 'mean- spirited'. I just could not take it anymore knowing what I know about God.

2) 'I became aware of right and wrong': In such a spiritual, social, cultural, intellectual and theological mess - I suggest - it would be darned difficult to have any clear sense of 'right and wrong'. It would likely occur that one would open one's mouth and spout blather, that one would self-contradict, that one would give evidence of having no solid and established base from which to rationate on the topic. At the most basic and social level we live in a society with a solidly-defined jurisprudential system in which ideas about right and wrong are thought through painstakingly. Argued, debated, and decided on. At the other extreme - that of theology - a similar endeavour is enacted, and yet the topic deals on, essentially, speculations of man's relationship to a divine being (etc.) But to engage in this area, just as in jurisprudence, requires a clear mind, a prepared mind, not a randomly-organized topsy-turvy girlish mind. One might suggest that such a topsy-turvy mind must turn to an ordered mind to begin to sift through and order the confusion. Not an impossible task.

Oh Good, I hope we are getting to the part where you start doing philosophy! So, tell me a little bit about this 'Right and wrong' I've heard so much about. Does it have anything to do with the 10 commandments or can I put those in the trash? Enlighten me.

3) 'Understanding oneself in relation to God': the most demanding task that a man may set himself to!

Amen!

4) 'I think most Christians do this': Well, if one were to base what one does, or what aspiration one has, on what 'most Christians do', it is possible to suggest that one would lose oneself before one had even begun! Cf: Kierkegaard's ideas of 'Christendom'.

Agreed. So you are saying that I have not 'lost' myself as I am not 'following' most Christians, basically.

4a) 'And while I can't tell you my beliefs are true, as I don't know that they are': Christians are just as everyone in the grip of virulent nihilism. A near-psychosis of confusion, of twisted ideas, or confused mind, and moral morass. True, this is a polemical statement and highly charged too. I say it like this to make a point, or to ask a question: Who can we rely on? What branch, what school, what philosophy department, what man, what woman, what nation, idea, or metaphysical platform?

LOL It's not as serious as your melodramatic appeal suggests. Be soothed in God's words that 'the truth will set you free'. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being honest. Whether we are theist or atheist we can't/don't know the reasons we are here. We don't know what God's plan is for us or the universes plan is, or the brain in the vat's for that matter. All we can do is to live our lives authentically. I choose to live mine being honest. I can't say there is a God because I have never seen a God. "Thou shalt not lie." But you might not consider that to be relevant to understanding God, so I realize to even quote a commandment might be blasphemous to you...you haven't said. Is it okay with you if I quote the bible occasionally? Or does your sect of Christianity frown upon that...it's been so long I don't know what you crazy kids believe anymore!

4b) Christianity offers two levels of solution: One is a defined belief system that you only need to join yourself to. Could be your Church, could be a specific branch of Christianity. To link up with that is to indoctrinate/reindoctrinate oneself into a specific set of ideas. This offers great comfort and security. In one way or another all human beings seek the confort of an idea-system that provides to them a sense of right and wrong, good and bad, that defines duty & cowardice, and offers a defined path a person can follow. No part of this is necessarily 'religious quest', nor 'philosophy', nor stepping onto a path of treacherous and dangerous examination of 'social constructs' of a religious sort.

Ah, no thank you. I will follow the God I know in my heart vs the false idol/God (man made religion) another may choose to follow.

4c) The second level is what Christians predominantly describe as 'discipleship'. I suggest this is unique and I also suggest that other religious forms do not place emphasis on this. Discipleship means to stake out for oneself, in prayer and meditation, and also through a method shall we say of 'listening to the world', a relationship with a conscious, and a necessarily superior, entity or spirit. I suggest that there is a great deal of prattle on this theme but that at its most essential point there is something of deep significance here. To tune-in to one's own conscience, and to cultivate one's own conscience, to educate one's conscience, to feed it and to grow it.

Yes, I do it everyday. But that is my personal thing, I would never suggest it for others. God gave them a life of their own....if there is a God. They will find him or not on God's time, not mine. If they come to me and ask me a question I will answer it to the best of my ability, but I will also tell them to seek their own truth and have their own relationship with God, if they want. And if they don't want...that's okay by me too. I will still be kind to them and love them. (most people really hate it when I talk like that...does it bother you? )

5) 'What God is telling us': "Hoo-boy!..." (I quote Felasco here ...) Look on YouTube for those self-published videos by minor suburban saints who speak about their 'communion' with god, their hearing of 'god's voice', and the commands and commentaries they receive. It is interesting to note that in other religions the idea of an individual and personal communion with 'God' is not part of the picture. One learns what 'God' wants and one resolves how to do it in one's life. I suggest that there is a rather grave danger - a seductive attraction - to imagining that 'God' will speak to one. And yet how could a religious person, trained up in the Christian metaphysic, NOT understand things in these terms?

Hmm...So you are saying, that if I have a thought, and want to know if it is right or wrong, that I could never know what God is telling me? See, here is the problem with your understanding of the bible. There is a simple way to know what God wants us to do. All we have to do is cross check our thoughts with the commandments that God gave us.

So if you think, "Hey, I think I will tell someone who I think is beneath me in intelligence that she has a, "randomly-organized topsy-turvy girlish mind"

Then, all you have to do to know whether you believe you are being right or wrong according to the bible, is to imagine you saying that very thing to God on judgment day.

If you can tell God that you thought it was a good idea to put down those who are less fortunate than you intellectually, and mean that you truly with all your heart think it's the moral thing to do, then you are not to be held accountable for your sin as you are not capable of understanding.

However, if you can't look God in the eye, and tell him with all conviction that you think it a good idea put down those who are less fortunate than you intellectually, then there is your answer...you know it is morally wrong put down those who are less fortunate than you intellectually, and you know God would think so too.

5a) It is possible, though I would not say that it is recommended, to sweep everything off the table when one begins to think about 'God'. I mean: doctrine, scripture, religious tracts, tacky religious kitsch (of a physical and of a mental sort), priests, gurus, movements, whole histories of man, and to significantly start anew. The Bible is a confused mass of strange psychosis, fantasy, projection, self-aggrandizement, with a psychotic madman Yahweh bellowing commands at power-hungry people. The NT a child's fairybook, an encapsulation of desperate phantasies that have never been true and will never be true and yet which capture and captivate successive generations. It is POSSIBLE to suggest that all this kitsch be tossed aside and a new examination of the questions undertaken:

• What is this place where we find ourselves?
• What is the purpose of my 'coming to exist here'?
• In what area (say, duty or pleasure) shall I focus myself?
• What REALLY is the metaphysical structure of this place?
• How can I find out about that?
• Where do I get 'real' information?
• Is it best to abandon all unverifiable notions of metaphysics? (Gods overseeing us, and even 'otherworlds' or 'postworlds'?)
  ... or not.
• What is consciousness? What is being? What does 'God' mean in all that? When we say 'God', What in the heck do we mean?

(This question list can go on ...)

As far as God goes, this is exactly what I am doing, on a very basic level, so anyone can understand. Not everyone is as intelligent as you. But most everyone can understand the 10 commandments...even if they can't understand the bible.

As you say:

The Bible is a confused mass

How else would one be able to tell right from wrong in this 'confused mass' that is called the bible, without first understanding what we are commanded to do? Or are you rebuking the 10 commandments?

6) 'The feeling I have inside just might be a mental illness': One thing to consider, and to consider deeply, is that in our present culture, and in the climate of the present, to be a religious person, to have that inclination, to feel that connection, is now being defined as mental illness! Our present culture has established as indicators of balance and sanity a whole group of activities and attitudes that it defines as indicating normalcy, and these are supported by social attitude, by public relations constructions, by attitude-demonstrations by teachers, authorities, politicians, entertainers and those who forge public opinion. While mental illness may be real, I suggest that to have a functioning and functional spirituality is not a symptom of mental illness. But mental confusion, disturbed and unsettled emotions, deep inner conflict, and other factors, may begin to feel like 'mental illness'. Also, in an environment where aberrations are held up as normalcy, there will operate a tendency to regard any attitude or speech which takes issue against those aberrations as 'sickness'. These (false) declarations of normalcy can function intellectually, sexually, interpersonally, politically, economically, and in all arenas of life. There are very powerful games - very serious games - being played to define normalcy, to define sanity, ethics and all else. Extremely powerful players, with vastly powerful PR tools are fighting in this realm, staking out the terms of normalcy, decency and all else. It is a game of deceit and manipulation.

Don't put words into my mouth...I get really really cranky when people do that...ask hobbes. I am NOT defining Christianity as a mental illness. What I AM getting at is that if I (personally) saw God, like Abraham did, and God told me to kill my son, I would think I was mentally ill first, before I thought God was asking me to murder. I would go to a hospital and get a check up on my health!

Now, If by some miracle it was actually God showing himself to me and I wasn't nuts, then I would tell him no. I would say, I cannot kill my son because your commandments say, "thou shall not kill." So, you have no power over me here...as I am damned if I do and damned if I don't. So I choose in this case to follow your previous commandments because that is the 'kind' thing to do. The thing I know is 'right'. As that is what you have put in my heart. So I do not know this God and I rebuke him in the name of Jesus Christ.

Now, find fault in that understanding of God. I dare you.

Unfortunately, I don't think you can have a conversation. I wish to suggest to you, with respect to you, that your ideas are so much in a jumble that the major effort would fall to me (or any interlocutor you engage with) to begin to help you to organize your thinking into something coherent. So, I prefer to let my two posts remain as my response to the general problem you have brought up. I will say this: To be able to think about 'right and wrong', and to make decisions about 'right and wrong', requires a strong, organized and also a prepared mind.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:Unfortunately, I don't think you can have a conversation. I wish to suggest to you, with respect to you, that your ideas are so much in a jumble that the major effort would fall to me (or any interlocutor you engage with) to begin to help you to organize your thinking into something coherent. So, I prefer to let my two posts remain as my response to the general problem you have brought up. I will say this: To be able to think about 'right and wrong', and to make decisions about 'right and wrong', requires a strong, organized and also a prepared mind.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
Friedrich Nietzsche

As you were, gustav.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:Unfortunately, I don't think you can have a conversation. I wish to suggest to you, with respect to you, that your ideas are so much in a jumble that the major effort would fall to me (or any interlocutor you engage with) to begin to help you to organize your thinking into something coherent.

Let me parse this sentence for those who find your form of language inscrutable.

You cannot respond respond to AS' long, thoughtful and detailed post because she expresses ideas which contradict your own.

Let me now parse my own sentence for those who find my form of language inscrutable.

You are a self-righteous shithead, Gustav.

Gustav wrote: Again, there is no mean-spiritedness here as I recognise good-heartedness and other non-intellectual qualities - human qualities basically - as often trumping well-ordered intellectual ideas and 'intellectualism'.

Gosh, that isn't patronizing at all.

Gentlemen: Do not take anything I say in that way. Separate out emotions. You act like offended girls. It's cute but a waste of time.

[img=http://s28.postimg.org/cwjrg4lp9/image.jpg]

[img=http://s11.postimg.org/kzekj36qr/image.jpg]

To be able to understand how we have come to define good and evil requires backtracking into medieval conceptions and ideas.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:Gentlemen: Do not take anything I say in that way. Separate out emotions. You act like offended girls. It's cute but a waste of time.

[img=http://s28.postimg.org/cwjrg4lp9/image.jpg]

[img=http://s11.postimg.org/kzekj36qr/image.jpg]

To be able to understand how we have come to define good and evil requires backtracking into medieval conceptions and ideas.

Oh dear lord...just as I suspected. There is no philosophy to be had here, only patriarchal type Bull..."Do As I Say, Because I Said So!"

How hard it is to attempt to communicate difficult ideas to one who has no preparation. The Medieval (in this case Aristotelian) cosmology is the structure of view out of which our ideas about good and evil come. Or, to put it another way, the structure of understanding by which ideas of good and evil are expressed. To make statements about good and evil one has to define man.

This represents the root of philosophy and the starting-point of modern philosophy! It is likely that little or none of this will make any sense to you - your mind is mush - but I notice that others read here. The point of a forum like this is to learn. To be challenged.

Ideas have consequences.

I am constrained by the fact that I'm writing on a tablet. In a day or two I will offer some commentary on the selections from Harding Craig's work, The Enchanted Glass.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:The point of a forum like this is to learn. To be challenged.

And you probably need it most of all, since you don't think you do.