Christianity

[Walker]

Well, temple and contemplate come from the same root, and each requires two. That's a clue, and may even change no idea, to an idea such as, with whom do you contemplate, when alone?

[phyllo]

One knows nothing of the kind. One never knows what "would" have happened, but did not.

I wonder how you can make any decision at all since you don't know what might, could, would happen.

It's not that. One makes guesses and estimates all the time. What one can't make are definite conclusions.

Your claim that the Inquisition saved more people from death needs evidence. There's none available from a guess.

This has been researched by historians.

The historical revision of the Inquisition is a historiographical process that started to emerge in the 1970s, with the opening of formerly closed archives, the development of new historical methodologies, and, in Spain, the death of the ruling dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. New works of historical revisionism changed our knowledge of the history of the Roman and Spanish Inquisitions.

Writers associated with this project share the view of Edward Peters, a prominent historian in the field, who states: "The Inquisition was an image assembled from a body of legends and myths which, between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries, established the perceived character of inquisitorial tribunals and influenced all ensuing efforts to recover their historical reality."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historica ... nquisition

[seeds]

This is epiphenomenalism, the view which I've already pointed out is analytically defeated in the article Exit Epiphenomenalism: The Demolition of a Refuge by Titus Rivas & Hein van Dongen. Of course, as hq points out, disproofs such as this will simply be ignored by the fools of physicalism, who are only interested in evidence which supports their view.

You just don't get it, do you? Consciousness can not push atoms around. End of discussion.

Nonsense!

Every time you raise an arm to scratch an itch on your head, it represents a situation where consciousness (your own consciousness) is pushing a vast number of atoms around.

Indeed, this,...



...for example, represents a situation where the consciousness of the signer is using atoms to convey that which resides within her own mind, to the minds of other consciousnesses.

Indeed, even hardcore materialism itself refutes your claim.

As I have stated to my (hopefully) good Internet friend, uwot,...

...If according to hardcore materialism there is literally nothing else other than matter, then that means that the stuff that forms our thoughts and dreams is simply an inward extension of the same stuff that forms the stars and planets.

And what that implies is that if humans (within the inner context of our own minds) can willfully grasp the substance that forms the stars and planets and transform it into anything we wish (by merely “thinking it” into the forms we desire),...

...then, clearly, our wills hold sway over the fundamental essence of universal matter, either "directly" in the case of the inner-dimension of our own minds, or "indirectly" in the case of the outer reality of the universe.
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[seeds]

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(Note: if anyone thinks that I am derailing a thread titled "Christianity" with my wild sounding metaphysical "suggestions," then they are wrong, for everything I am asserting is right in line with what the core of Christianity implies.)

I wonder why we have physical bodies at all if they are not needed for interaction with physical reality.

It's needless to say that I could be wrong about all of this, however,...

...I suggest that the physical body represents the means by which the mind (soul) is initially birthed (awakened) into existence. And once the soul experiences its second and final birth into "true reality" through the process we call "death," the physical body, like some higher form of "placental afterbirth," is discarded...


...and left behind within the universe....

Why eyes if we can see without them?

You do not "see" the vivid, three-dimensional features of your dreams with your "physical" eyes...

No, your physical eyes are but mere "windows" that allow the mind's inner "agent" to peer outward into the universe, which, in truth, is the inner dimension of the mind of a higher Being (think Berkeleyanism).

Indeed, our physical body, which is created from the mental substances of a higher mind, is not only the means by which the higher mind has awakened our own minds into existence,...

...but also functions as a multi-sensory "interface" that (momentarily) allows us (our inner "I Am-ness") to literally see, feel, hear, smell, and taste another agent's very thoughts (its "mental constructs/mental holography"),...

...of which the physical body itself (along with its various corresponding "windows") is nothing more than a mental construct (albeit unthinkably advanced).

I wonder why there are lots of physical people and not many non-physical spirits in the world.

Again, it's because this physical world...

(which, in essence, is God's cosmic "womb")

...is the means by which the so-called "spirit world"...

(which is simply a higher mental realm)

...is populated.

Indeed, the higher (transcendent) realm exists above and outside of this physical world in pretty much the same way that the general reality of this earthly realm existed above and outside of your momentary stay within your mother's womb, as I tried to demonstrate in yet another of my fanciful illustrations...



The captions read as follows:

"...let us make man in our image..."

"...one of us..."

"...The occupants of the realm on the other side of this barrier are as profoundly "more awake" relative to adult humans on earth, as adult humans on earth are "more awake" relative to a fetus in the human womb..."

(Click on the following link to see a series of illustrations tied to the one directly above: http://theultimateseeds.com/murmurings.htm)
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^^
This is pure lunacy.

I agree with you, Nazon.

However, do you want to know what is an even purer form of lunacy?...

...It's how someone can actually believe that the completely blind and mindless processes of gravity and thermodynamics, without the slightest way of knowing what they were doing or creating, could have caused this,...



...which is a speculative representation of the chaotic and random dispersion of disparate bits of post "Big Bang" quantum phenomena, to somehow be transformed into this,...



...which is an unthinkably stable setting from which...

...a functioning brain working within a functioning body...

...could not only then effloresce from the very fabric of the setting itself, but also be provided with absolutely everything it could possibly want or need to survive and flourish for millions (if not billions) of years.

Now that ^^^...

(as in anyone who actually believes that the blind and mindless processes of gravity and thermodynamics could create such a setting)

...is, indeed, the purest form of "lunacy."

And to top all of that off, if the chance stumbling's of gravity and thermodynamics failed to weave something in particular into the fabric of the setting, then all we have to do (with the recent advent of quantum physics) is reach down into the fabric's quantum threadwork...



...and "presto-chango" we can now transform the setting into anything we wish.

My goodness, isn't that remarkably convenient?

I mean, it's as if the universe were composed of some kind of infinitely malleable "mind-stuff" that conscious beings can manipulate and transform into pretty much anything they can "imagine."

So, tell me, Nazon, do you know of anyone who is actually foolish enough to believe the utterly ridiculous nonsense that this...



...is the result of chance?
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[Immanuel Can]

I wonder how you can make any decision at all since you don't know what might, could, would happen.

It's not that. One makes guesses and estimates all the time. What one can't make are definite conclusions.

Your claim that the Inquisition saved more people from death needs evidence. There's none available from a guess.

This has been researched by historians.

Historians' guesses are not special. The past is no determinant of the future. And a good historian will provide evidence, not guesses. What you want is what's called a "Futurist," not a "historian." Or maybe you want a "prophet."

One thing for sure...nobody is qualified to say what would have happened but didn't.

Nobody knows.

[phyllo]

It's not that. One makes guesses and estimates all the time. What one can't make are definite conclusions.

Your claim that the Inquisition saved more people from death needs evidence. There's none available from a guess.

This has been researched by historians.

Historians' guesses are not special. The past is no determinant of the future. And a good historian will provide evidence, not guesses. What you want is what's called a "Futurist," not a "historian." Or maybe you want a "prophet."

One thing for sure...nobody is qualified to say what would have happened but didn't.

Nobody knows.

That anti-intellectual attitude doesn't even surprise me.

[Nick_A]

Well, think of it this way, Harry.

[Elaboration snipped]

With all of that laid out, I'm fairly agreeable with it.

However, I still want to flag a caveat of discomfort: you seemed to imply in your original statement that AJ does consider "the Pogroms, Inquisitions, Crusades, and so on" to be genuinely Christian, and that you and I disagreed with him on that basis. As I have never seen him make an explicit statement to this effect, I'm not sure that he does take that view, and thus I am not sure that there is any disagreement. My guess is that he would add his own caveat: yes, this is broadly under a Christian rubric, but not at all a healthy or genuinely spiritual and ethical expression of Christianity - but I don't want to put words into his mouth (even though I've just done that!).

Harry, as you well know I have what I think you have identified as a complex and somewhat troubling notion of 'how power actually functions in our world'. When Satan, in the picture-story, took the cartoon Jesus up above the World to look down on all the Kingdoms of the Earth, what perspective essentially operated there? What makes the world *bad* and *evil* and therefore satanic?

It is the world itself. It is the power-dynamic. It is nature that sets up systems where one being, to live, must literally devour another being. Understanding this seems so very important to me.

Christianity, in one sense, is a sort of neurotic reaction against the 'reality' of the way the world functions. The world functions that way now and the world will always function that way. I mean, nature will always function as it does. But I do not say that I do not think that we (humans) cannot create, within smallish spheres, more 'just' and 'fair' systems. That is what society is for, is it not?

The power dynamics of old Spain are power-dynamics that are being repeated, perhaps in even more extreme manner, today. All of the machinations to move the embassy to Israel, to cooperate with Israel in its projects, the remodeling of the Middle East, the establishment of global economic and trade-systems: it is all the same. And we live in it and we are subsumed in it. America has an empire. It manages a world-empire. Just as Spain did but far larger and with more consequence, both good and bad.

This is one of the core ideas that I work with. A clear statement about 'the nature of the world'. All other systems and states compete in exactly this dynamic. There is no way out of that dynamic. I apologize if this is upsetting news to you.

Now, I know that all of these machinations are deeply troubling to you. I know that you cannot, in one sense, see them as they are but must see all of it as manifestations of evil (the conquest of Australia, the conquest of the American continent, etc).

In a sense I see things with Satan's eyes. Or perhaps if I say I go along on the tour put together by satanic perspective -- Satan flying Jesus, the observing man, on the magic carpet to *see* the real working of things -- and therefore participate in Jesus's eyes?

The power-dynamic will always exist. It is part-and-parcel of the World. The only way out is through absolute renunciation.

What Immanuel has referred to -- the Germanic movement to a) throw off the Hebrew idea-imperialism yoke, and b) the need and desire to return to pagan ideas and pagan paths and to validate these as genuine (in the Heideggerian sense) -- these things are extremely laden, fraught and difficult topics. I have made efforts to study these topics. And that alone places me in a questionable territory of intellectual work.

Now I have read George L. Mosse's The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich as well as The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany by Susannah Heschel (daughter of the famous Abraham Joshua Heschel) and I have read Julius Evola's Fascism Viewed from the Right and many other titles (like Alain de Benoist) by those who critique, with tremendous power and sound reasoning, the Christian imperious construct (Hebrew idea-imperialism).

So I am very open, though not as prepared as I might like (this all takes time) to discuss any aspect of these issues.

But I simply want to point out, because it is true, that Immanuel has an extremely monistic position and conception. He literally believes that Jesus will come down out of the clouds and set up the Kingdom as The Prince of Peace. Once one grasps his absolutist, fantastical and as I say fanatic position, then his *project* becomes far more clear. The implications of this strange way of seeing can then be unraveled. Carefully and cautiously.

I am open to looking at all things. All the things that are manifest today.

I'm not being critical with this question. I'm curious as to what you've learned from all the books you've read and the opinions they have presented. In your opinion do the multitude of opinions themselves lead to knowledge?

In Book V of the Republic, Plato elaborates on the difference between knowledge and opinion. Both are "faculties," one enabling us to know, and the other to form opinions. The faculty of knowledge is infallible, while the faculty of opinion is subject to error.

Satan or Lucifer's goal is creating the dominance of opinions through obfuscation? Knowledge is lost by attachments to opinions. In this way the world lives in darkness incapable of the infallibility of knowledge. Satan does his job well. Do you think that all the opinions you've read on bring you any closer to objective infallible knowledge? If the world lives in spiritual darkness, then opinions can only reflect the results of spiritual blindness and devoid of knowledge.

[Harry Baird]

So you're okay with what he posted?

I've edited away the offensive content, including in both the original post, the shortly following further insulting one, and the later two in which I doubled down on the offensive content. It really did cross a line and was highly inappropriate, especially on a public philosophy board on which young people might be reading, and especially in a thread on Christianity. It was also a poor way to handle my complaint - by reacting so as to obscenely and contemptuously demean the man against whom I held it, rather than to address that complaint up-front and directly - on which, more below. I'm sorry to the board and to phyllo for my error of judgement. I invite those who quoted anything offensive to in turn remove it from their own posts, however, that's of course a matter for their own judgement.

As I made clear at the time, my complaint was the false claim that I was psychotic (along with the tacit support that this implied for the nescience that I had been - vigorously, but not psychotically - criticising, which of course inspired the offensive content).

I invite you, then, phyllo, to in turn retract that false claim.

[Immanuel Can]

This has been researched by historians.

Historians' guesses are not special. The past is no determinant of the future. And a good historian will provide evidence, not guesses. What you want is what's called a "Futurist," not a "historian." Or maybe you want a "prophet."

One thing for sure...nobody is qualified to say what would have happened but didn't.

Nobody knows.

That anti-intellectual attitude doesn't even surprise me.

It's not anti-intellectual, of course. "Intellectuals" don't prophesy. That's no part of their kit.

What would be unintellectual, and unscientific, would be to speculate on things that never happened. Science requires evidence, and intellection requires logic. Unless you have one or the other, you're just speculating.

[Dubious]

_______

(Note: if anyone thinks that I am derailing a thread titled "Christianity" with my wild sounding metaphysical "suggestions," then they are wrong, for everything I am asserting is right in line with what the core of Christianity implies.)

It's needless to say that I could be wrong about all of this, however,...

...I suggest that the physical body represents the means by which the mind (soul) is initially birthed (awakened) into existence. And once the soul experiences its second and final birth into "true reality" through the process we call "death," the physical body, like some higher form of "placental afterbirth," is discarded...


...and left behind within the universe....




You do not "see" the vivid, three-dimensional features of your dreams with your "physical" eyes...

No, your physical eyes are but mere "windows" that allow the mind's inner "agent" to peer outward into the universe, which, in truth, is the inner dimension of the mind of a higher Being (think Berkeleyanism).

Indeed, our physical body, which is created from the mental substances of a higher mind, is not only the means by which the higher mind has awakened our own minds into existence,...

...but also functions as a multi-sensory "interface" that (momentarily) allows us (our inner "I Am-ness") to literally see, feel, hear, smell, and taste another agent's very thoughts (its "mental constructs/mental holography"),...

...of which the physical body itself (along with its various corresponding "windows") is nothing more than a mental construct (albeit unthinkably advanced).


Again, it's because this physical world...

(which, in essence, is God's cosmic "womb")

...is the means by which the so-called "spirit world"...

(which is simply a higher mental realm)

...is populated.

Indeed, the higher (transcendent) realm exists above and outside of this physical world in pretty much the same way that the general reality of this earthly realm existed above and outside of your momentary stay within your mother's womb, as I tried to demonstrate in yet another of my fanciful illustrations...



The captions read as follows:



(Click on the following link to see a series of illustrations tied to the one directly above: http://theultimateseeds.com/murmurings.htm)
_______

^^
This is pure lunacy.

I agree with you, Nazon.

However, do you want to know what is an even purer form of lunacy?...

...It's how someone can actually believe that the completely blind and mindless processes of gravity and thermodynamics, without the slightest way of knowing what they were doing or creating, could have caused this,...



...which is a speculative representation of the chaotic and random dispersion of disparate bits of post "Big Bang" quantum phenomena, to somehow be transformed into this,...



...which is an unthinkably stable setting from which...

...a functioning brain working within a functioning body...

...could not only then effloresce from the very fabric of the setting itself, but also be provided with absolutely everything it could possibly want or need to survive and flourish for millions (if not billions) of years.

Now that ^^^...

(as in anyone who actually believes that the blind and mindless processes of gravity and thermodynamics could create such a setting)

...is, indeed, the purest form of "lunacy."

And to top all of that off, if the chance stumbling's of gravity and thermodynamics failed to weave something in particular into the fabric of the setting, then all we have to do (with the recent advent of quantum physics) is reach down into the fabric's quantum threadwork...



...and "presto-chango" we can now transform the setting into anything we wish.

My goodness, isn't that remarkably convenient?

I mean, it's as if the universe were composed of some kind of infinitely malleable "mind-stuff" that conscious beings can manipulate and transform into pretty much anything they can "imagine."

So, tell me, Nazon, do you know of anyone who is actually foolish enough to believe the utterly ridiculous nonsense that this...



...is the result of chance?
_______

It's a number's game; a game of chance. There are over a hundred billion planets in the Milky Way alone. What are the odds of a living planet not existing in that entire array of possibilities? Virtually nil! Chance is the weaver creating as many variations on a given set as possible. This only mentions our galaxy but billions of galaxies exist in the universe so, in effect, the number is trillions of planets

If there were only, let's say, a thousand planets in a single existing galaxy then your version makes more sense in presupposing a much higher probability in the existence of a master intelligence. But based on the numbers of what cosmology itself declares, it would be a miracle of the highest order if planets hosting life wouldn't exist - or that only one would exist - based on the rules of chance alone. Chance, time and entropy are enough to have created everything seen and not seen. It doesn't require any silly transcendental realm which in itself explains nothing, amounting only to an expression of our will that there be an actual intelligence, a conscious designer causing all creation to become more personal than the thorough indifference in the game of chance it actually is and through that process creating the exceptions.

[Harry Baird]

So, tell me, Nazon, do you know of anyone who is actually foolish enough to believe the utterly ridiculous nonsense that this...



...is the result of chance?
_______

It's a number's game; a game of chance. There are over a hundred billion planets in the Milky Way alone.

You seem to misinterpret that which seeds is pointing out. Your "number's game" already assumes the order which (s)he points out is not derivable from mere chance.

It's a fascinating point. It does, indeed, seem impossible for the vast order of the cosmos to arise from utter chaos of the type which seeds analogises via television static.

On the other hand, the alternative seems to be that that order arose from a preexisting order, which simply pushes the question back.

How to resolve this conundrum?

[Harry Baird]

Harry, I think you might be substantially unaware of numerous very relevant details that pertain extremely relevantly to Evangelical conceptions and worldview.

But AJ, why would anything in my post have indicated that to you?

I explicitly stated that "It's a relationship of mutual convenience: two parties cynically using one another."

Everything that you wrote is compatible with this statement. For a start: the evangelicals used Trump to move the American embassy to Jerusalem, and Trump in turn used the evangelicals for significant political support. A relationship of mutual convenience, as I said.

I felt compelled to dig into my browser history, because I knew that I had viewed material "extremely [relevant] to Evangelical conceptions and worldview", and one resource which I pulled up, and which I suspect was subconsciously from which I derived the idea of "a relationship of mutual convenience: two parties cynically using one another", was this YouTube video:

Unholy alliance: Trump, evangelicals and QAnon | The Bottom Line

I've just rewatched it, and, I also suspect, AJ, that you would find it very relevant and insightful if you watched it too.

[Belinda]

The apprehension of natural beauty is not the result of chance. It's the result of nature which is an ordered affair. Nature's harmony that exists between human apprehension of beauty and what is apprehended is not in doubt. This harmony is a function of the human brain/mind.

[Harry Baird]

The apprehension of natural beauty is not the result of chance. It's the result of nature which is an ordered affair. Nature's harmony that exists between human apprehension of beauty and what is apprehended is not in doubt. This harmony is a function of the human brain/mind.

I take it, Belinda - and please correct me if I'm wrong - that you're responding in turn in the exchange running from seeds's post raising the problem of "order from chaos", to which Dubious responded, to which I in turn then responded.

If so, and if you meant to address the key issue in that exchange, then I think that your response misses the point.

The issue in question is how order might arise from chaos, to which I added the additional observation that the alternative (order coming from order) doesn't solve the issue either, merely pushing the question back. You assert that "nature [...] is an ordered affair", but this, like Dubious's response, simply assumes the order which seeds has asked us to explain. It's not an explanation of that order.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It doesn't require any silly transcendental realm which in itself explains nothing, amounting only to an expression of our will that there be an actual intelligence, a conscious designer causing all creation to become more personal than the thorough indifference in the game of chance it actually is and through that process creating the exceptions.

It depends on how one conceives and theorizes 'transcendent realm'. The way I take it to mean, though I can't have any idea about how or why it takes place, is that everything that takes shape in our Cosmos (and in everything that we are aware of that exists, arising, as it is conceived, out of some event they say began a certain number of billions of years ago) all that takes shape, all that becomes formed, does so because design was inherent.

I am not sure how useful the static analogy actually is. Simply because even in those early nanoseconds there was said to be all sorts of 'structured' changes and movements. The patterning was there right from the start. There was then, and there is now, nothing that corresponds to the *static image* (which means no-particular-design and is a metaphor for chaos).

I would modify 'transcendent realm' simply to indicate that even when things were non-manifest that manifestation was already implied. Things had to flow-out according to the logic built-in. Or perhaps one imagines that the Universe as it unfolds invents itself? That it could have been this or it could have been that?

It is a false-assertion to imply that it is an act of our own will that necessarily explains that all that is manifest inherently existed prior to it coming to exist. It is I think a 'logical necessity'. But I will agree that one's 'will' (in the sense of strong belief) does get behind the numerous concomitants that extend from the asserted premise.

Similarly, I could make mention, Dubious, of your own *will* in operation to -- what is the right term? -- refuse to entertain the *necessity* of implied design in the vast unfolding of things. You seem to deny or dismiss the pre-design notion. But what is your explanation then? What determines how things take shape?