Christianity

[Dubious]

Immanuel Can wrote:

True, the holy is all things that are of God and so holy must therefore be good.

This obviously assumes that everything God creates must be good, which is not supported by evidence.

That depends on how you define God. There's no point to any monolithic god that is not good.

If god requires a definition by the likes of us then it can't be absolute. Definitions are always relative to them who define it. Not least, goodness as it relates to god again refers to our sense of direction of what we expect god to be. No matter how you slice it, god and whatever qualities it may have, is granted by whatever attributes we give it, its features driven by our imagination of what sacred and holy means to us. In that respect, god is the least absolute most customized entity ever created.

[BigMike]

Immanuel Can wrote:



True, the holy is all things that are of God and so holy must therefore be good.

This obviously assumes that everything God creates must be good, which is not supported by evidence.

That depends on how you define God. There's no point to any monolithic god that is not good.

Who said there was a point to God?

[Belinda]

This obviously assumes that everything God creates must be good, which is not supported by evidence.

That depends on how you define God. There's no point to any monolithic god that is not good.

Who said there was a point to God?

If people or any other intelligence discovers there is no point to an idea they let the idea be redundant.

[BigMike]

That depends on how you define God. There's no point to any monolithic god that is not good.

Who said there was a point to God?

If people or any other intelligence discovers there is no point to an idea they let the idea be redundant.

As an ardent atheist, I once believed that Christians believed they served God, and not the other way around, and that they did not consider God to be a nice idea that serves their purpose; and that, if God did not serve their purpose, they would simply "let the idea be redundant." But, how would I know?

[Belinda]

Who said there was a point to God?

If people or any other intelligence discovers there is no point to an idea they let the idea be redundant.

As an ardent atheist, I once believed that Christians believed they served God, and not the other way around, and that they did not consider God to be a nice idea that serves their purpose; and that, if God did not serve their purpose, they would simply "let the idea be redundant." But, how would I know?

Yes, but Christianity, besides founded on a supernatural myth is also founded on a man's life. This down to Earth aspect of Xianity allows the Christ icon to move with times and places.

In other words, it's a supple connection between the absolute and the temporal.

[BigMike]

If people or any other intelligence discovers there is no point to an idea they let the idea be redundant.

As an ardent atheist, I once believed that Christians believed they served God, and not the other way around, and that they did not consider God to be a nice idea that serves their purpose; and that, if God did not serve their purpose, they would simply "let the idea be redundant." But, how would I know?

Yes, but Christianity, besides founded on a supernatural myth is also founded on a man's life. This down to Earth aspect of Xianity allows the Christ icon to move with times and places.

In other words, it's a supple connection between the absolute and the temporal.

You are essentially arguing that it is an urban legend concocted by the powerful to exploit the common people.

[promethean75]

That is absolutely what I'm arguing; it promotes a meekness of character and a passive acceptance of the wealth disparity experienced by the lower (working or not) classes. Marx already explained all this bruh. There wuz a mass opium epidemic or something.

but those empires didn't invent Chris T. Annity, they appropriated it and through observation of Christianity in practice, found it to be stabilizing and complimentary to the interests of the wealthiest bourgeois classes. ergo, it's promoted, made a state or national religion, worked on and argued over by scholastic intellectual henchmen seated at sturdy oaken tables in their respective king's private counsel chambers, etc. What mattered wuz to keep the economic ball of production rolling and u needed a foundation for laws of all kinds, property, marital, business, public works, foreign affairs, for that to happen. U needed that final ingredient that makes a society work. U needed to use...




... the brain police

[Immanuel Can]

If you were right, then you would be able to provide a variety of sources which affirm that (that which has come to be known as) Euthyphro's Dilemma is based on disagreements among the gods.

Well, I think any fair reading makes it abundantly obvious. You have read it yourself, in the words of Socrates himself (assuming he existed, of course; otherwise, it's Plato).

The only reason people don't notice is because they're reading with an agenda in mind already. They need a "clincher" that lets them dismiss the whole God question at a stroke. When they think they've seen it, they quit looking. And this is the form in which I first encountered the Euthyphro argument itself; nobody told me what Socrates said earlier -- either because they didn't find it useful to what they wanted to see, or because they didn't want me to know it. But it was William Lane Craig who first alerted me to the earlier premises...and when I looked, I found out that he was entirely right. I was as surprised as you to find out that not only was Craig logically correct that a division between "gods" and "holy" was essential to the argument, but that Socrates himself explicitly said that that was so, and that it was not merely implicit but explicit in Socrates words. That is a stunning realization.

But if one reads the Euthyphro Dilemma for what Socrates actually says, and for the premises from which he, himself, launches the dilemma, you see exactly what I've said to you. And appealing to no number of cynics or supporters of my view will change what is. You can, Harry, see it for yourself. You are a reasonably astute reader, I think...so whatever you choose to say, I know you see it, too.

As for the ad hom stuff...none of it is true, obviously. You don't know my motives or my character, though it may please you to imagine you do. You certainly can't tell from what I write whether I am trolling, or I believe it in truth, and am possibly merely badly misguided, in your estimation. However, let's suppose it's all true. And let's suppose far worse than you have imagined is also true of me. Let us mount up the pejoratives to heaven, shall we?

What will that change? Nothing. The truth with remain the truth, and the text will still say what the text says, and logic will still require the premise that "holy" and "what the gods approve" must be two different things, in order for the Euthyphro Dilemma to have any teeth at all.

But the Word of God says this: “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory.” (Is. 6:3) Holiness is a property of God, before it is an attribution of any other thing. The very adjective derives from relationship to Him. And this is, in fact, how Christians see the situation, and for them, it becomes the first premise in any discussion of the subject of what is "holy."

There we are.

[Immanuel Can]

So, again you want me to do your work for you...

No. I just want to see if you have a point.

Several people here have pointed out that you lie and distort in your discussions with them.

You shouldn't have a hard time finding one, then. Go ahead, because I don't concede your allegation at all. But if I have erred somewhere, I'll happily correct myself for you.

However, you'll have to have some data. We don't accept gratutious claims here.

[Immanuel Can]

Marx already explained all this bruh. There wuz a mass opium epidemic or something.

Not even today's Marxists accept Marx without many serious caveats, actually. They now refer to his views as "crude Marxism," and their own as "Neo-Marxism," because they hope to patch up the defects that are manifestly in Marx's errant pronouncements.

Quite simply, most of what Marx prophesied has simply not come true. In fact, nothing like it did. Much of what has happened has proved contradictory to what Marx promised. An unreformed Marxism would thus be so obviously wrong that nobody could believe in it anymore. So Neo-Marxism has rushed in, to "save" the Marxian project if it can. And it's provided a new and different set of prophesies, on the assumption that these will be better than Marx's own, because we are now better informed of what was really going to happen.

But this strategy is, on the backhand, also an indictment of Marx: one cannot aim to "improve" Marx without also implying that Marx stood in grave need of "improving." So Neo-Marxists make themselves the new "Marx," as they have to stand on the grave of the old one. But they can't think of an alternative, so that's the price they agree to pay. If they don't, then the whole Marxian aspiration is dead.

https://fee.org/articles/some-mistakes-of-marx/

[Alexis Jacobi]

Be that as it may the attitude communicated in the poem has the most importance. It connects to other attitudes and ideas which ground otherworldliness and thus are of use to us.

It's well-written but I find its sentiments mundane.

My interest (personally of course) is in those antidotes to the infiltration of eastern ideas and the recovery by a people of those attitudes and elements that can define a new and better modality.

Sorry, but I don't quite get the gist of your meaning here.

Having always stated that "I am here for my own purposes" I mean to say that I am involved in my own project of sorting through everything that we talk about here. There is one important distinction though: I have been, and still am, quite involved with and interested in The Culture Wars. In my view, perhaps I could say ultimately, The Culture Wars are metaphysical struggles at the base.

Here, in this present thread, we seem to be taking a definitive stance against an Evangelical Christian. The person *Immanuel Can* is not relevant to the struggle we are involved in. What we oppose is the *idea-constructs* to which he has wedded himself. Oddly, that puts me in a position of needing to argue against his metaphysical structures. These are giant assertions about what the world is and about the ruling structure that, in this metaphysics, is understood to rule the entire manifestation. So the Christian, borrowing directly from the Hebrew, defines a world, a cosmos, a ruler, the ruled, the purpose of the existence of All Things in a grandiose metaphysics which is imposed and enforced through the terms that we have been discussing here: You will get with the program, and you will surrender yourself to the Reigning Idea, or through your rebellion you will choose your destiny in a post-existential realm of permanent torture.

This is why, of course, I made an effort to suggest to Henry that here, in this tactic, we can see the ur-tactic of psychological manipulation.

However, standing behind this specific declaration about The Nature of Things, and here we have exposed some of the OT biblical declarations of the Mad Yahweh whose project is about Ultimate Power (that all enemies will be eliminated and the Earth will become the possession of the Tribe who have been selected to rule it), we come face-to-face, or I come face-to-face, with the fact that other and more ancient religious and metaphysical systems have certainly defined a Cosmic Order and have on that basis, or in relation to that Idea, organized social and cultural life into civilization. I am thinking specifically of Ṛta:

In the Vedic religion, Ṛta (/ɹ̩ta/; Sanskrit ऋत ṛta "order, rule; truth; logos") is the principle of natural order which regulates and coordinates the operation of the universe and everything within it. In the hymns of the Vedas, Ṛta is described as that which is ultimately responsible for the proper functioning of the natural, moral and sacrificial orders. Conceptually, it is closely allied to the injunctions and ordinances thought to uphold it, collectively referred to as Dharma, and the action of the individual in relation to those ordinances, referred to as Karma – two terms which eventually eclipsed Ṛta in importance as signifying natural, religious and moral order in later Hinduism. Sanskrit scholar Maurice Bloomfield referred to Ṛta as "one of the most important religious conceptions of the Rigveda, going on to note that, "from the point of view of the history of religious ideas we may, in fact we must, begin the history of Hindu religion at least with the history of this conception".

We can easily see that the system that Immanuel Can holds to and defends is, in fact, a commensurate or comparable sort of System. If one does not get this, if one does not understand that this is what the Hebrew-Christian system actually is, I think that one will miss the crucial point. And that point is that it is inevitable that man define the Cosmic Order. True it is though -- and you and BigMike (and others) can be cited as examples -- that one can try to absent oneself from this endeavor, dismiss the metaphysical notions that come through the human psyche, and attempt to locate *truth* within science facts (scientism perhaps), and imagine that one is free from the necessity of metaphysical definition . . . But my assertion is that this is impossible. It is an illusion. And it is one not without significant dangers.

So in reference to the poem I said:

"be that as it may the attitude communicated in the poem has the most importance. It connects to other attitudes and ideas which ground otherworldliness and thus are of use to us."

Clearly, and I think everyone here understands this, men like Goethe were confronting something that we ourselves are also confronting but 200 years later. What is this? Perhaps we could answer this question if we became clear about what, exactly, we are arguing against, with a good deal of vehemence, in the position that our own Evangelical Christian is holding to, and must hold to, with a corresponding vehemence. This brings us into the realm of The Culture Wars.

I also said:

My interest (personally of course) is in those antidotes to the infiltration of eastern ideas and the recovery by a people of those attitudes and elements that can define a new and better modality.

Here I can say with surety that the gist of the unfolding conversation will move into a difficult, a fraught, and also a dangerous zone. Simply put the rejection of Christianity is the rejection of Judaism. Now, the rejection of Judeo-Christianity definitely brings one into the zone of The Culture Wars and directly into ideological, cultural and other sorts of struggles that are playing out today.

But it also means -- that is to say that the rejection of the Cosmic Order on which the Christian vision and metaphysics is constructed means -- that you will either do without any sort of defined order and accept the *erasure of the horizon* with no replacement offered, or you will have to define a new order, a new conceptual order that will become common, accepted and even perhaps universal.

It is obvious to me, and I assume it is obvious to all who write here, and it is certainly obvious to Immanuel Can (as chief representative of the Christian metaphysic) that the rejection of Judeo-Christianity has immense ramifications. But as we see (if we are paying attention to contemporary events) the cultural and the ideological battles rage right in front of us.

So I referred to *the infiltration of eastern ideas* in the form of Judeo-Christianity and to the prospect of *recovery by a people of those attitudes and elements that can define a new and better modality*.

For up against the gods
No man
Should measure himself.
If he raises himself
And touches the stars
With his head,
Nowhere can the insecure
Soles of his feet take grip,
And he will be the plaything
Of the winds and the clouds.
If he stands firm
On vigorous bone
On well-established,
Enduring soil,
He will reach a height
To compare himself
Only to the oak
Or the vine.

It is not merely poetic device to refer to *gods*, it is to take possession of, to repossess, ideas that are more peculiar to Indo-Europeanism in a far larger sense. To dethrone an absolute authority and a rather tyrannical god-concept will inevitably thrust one (that is Indo-European man) back into s set of definitions about what is but also who one is. Which is what I take Goethe to be doing here.

To define oneself and one's being within a holistic world, in a world in which gods exist, is presented as a needed and necessary act. It is a very different way of looking at the World. It is on that *ground* that this man sees himself as recovering himself. And only on that ground and *on vigorous bone* can man become similar to what an *oak* stands for: the Donar's Oak and obviously Thor's Oak (hence the reference to *beneficent bolts of lightning").

And certainly to refer to:

A never-ending stream.
We are raised up by waves,
Waves consume us
And we go under.
A small ring
Is the limit of our life,
And the many generations
Ceaselessly link them
To the endless chain
Of their existence.

Is to re-propose an entirely different definition of world.

But this is what we have been talking about, is it not? Relinquishing *afterworlds* and worlds that are presented as *truer worlds* and *more real worlds* that stand against this present world, and resolving to reside, again, here and within a cycle of life that is defined in radically different terms to that of Christian eschatological vision.

[Alexis Jacobi]

But the Word of God says this: “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory.” (Is. 6:3) Holiness is a property of God, before it is an attribution of any other thing. The very adjective derives from relationship to Him. And this is, in fact, how Christians see the situation, and for them, it becomes the first premise in any discussion of the subject of what is "holy.

There we are.

Nice. I like the order in which things are now unfolding and also progressing.

I can reject, and I present it as entirely possible and ethical to reject, adamantly and conclusively -- categorically if you will -- the idea-construct that unnaturally places 'holiness' into and onto the abstraction "the Lord of Hosts" [God as Lord over earthly or heavenly armies].

It is a false-claim that the Hebrew-defined Yahweh created the world. It leads to an unhealthy view of the world because it relocates what is *holy* (and really what in the heck does that term mean?) onto an abstraction that is outside of our world, and also outside of us.

So in my view we can now examine Goethe's poem not necessarily because it is excellent, stunning or amazing, but rather because it is offering a counter-proposition to the arrogating declaration the Lord of Hosts is portrayed as *being* and, indirectly, *saying*. The idea of theological ventriloquism then comes to the fore. Who has put these words, who has put these ideas, into the mouth of this abstracted god? Why? For what purpose? These are necessary questions that must be answered. And which can be answered.

Factually, to say "Holiness is a property of God" is actually to make a statement about one's own 'holiness'. We pretend that we are talking about this great god-concept but, I would suggest, we are making declarative statements about ourselves. We are the property of god, and thus we are holy to the degree that we resound the declaration. It is pretty transparent.

The whole earth is indeed 'filled with glory' but it is not, not really, Yahweh's glory as a possession; as a dominated field. The earth was glorious long before Yahweh appeared on the (human) scene. Truly though, these are heretical declarations I am making. Because I remove Yahweh from his self-assumed throne.

And I also have upset that throne and tossed belovèd Immanuel down as well.

And this is, in fact, how Christians see the situation, and for them, it becomes the first premise in any discussion of the subject of what is "holy.

Well of course!

But since it is as you say *the first premise* . . . it is also the first premise that needs to be reexamined, thought through over again, and I would say redefined.

To dethrone Yahweh does not mean to dethrone the concept of the holy or holiness though. Though I think that would be necessary for a strict atheist. How could 'holiness' exist for an atheist? It can't. But *marvelous* could be a replacement.

Yet in the pagan view (or neo-pagan if you wish) the idea of what is 'holy' and also what is venerable shifts. It is a question of focus or emphasis. But it also has to do with issues of power and sovereignty.

Does this mean I will go out today and plant an Oak?

Yahweh, please don't get too mad at me for what I am saying here! Try to understand, if you can.

[Immanuel Can]

Factually, to say "Holiness is a property of God" is actually to make a statement about one's own 'holiness'.

Um...no, no, it's not.

It means that God is holy. It doesn't even predicate a single thing about the speaker.

Wow. Do I have to actually SAY anything that obvious? Doesn't the grammar give it to you?

We are the property of god,

That depends what you mean.

"Rightfully" you are? Sure. All Creation owes Him its existence. He alone has absolute rights on it.

"Actually" you are? That depends. What is your actual relationship to God? For one can be alienated from God, which is the consequence of sin and self. And this is why the prophet Isaiah says, "All of us, like sheep, have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the wrongdoing of us all To fall on Him." (53:6), and Paul says, “There is no righteous person, not even one. There is no one who understands, There is no one who seeks out God; They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; There is no one who does good, There is not even one.” (Rm. 3:11-12).

"Straying" from God is what happens when we ought to be His, but refuse to be.

The earth was glorious long before Yahweh appeared on the (human) scene.

That's neither the Jewish nor the Christian understanding of who YHWH is, of course.

And I also have upset that throne and tossed belovèd Immanuel down as well.

Sorry...too funny. Not so upset.

[Immanuel Can]

It's false that God is highest expression of anything.

Technically, you're right, B: that wording is inadequate. It suggests that the property exists prior to God. But in my defense, it's the direction from which people understand the claim, so it can be more confusing to them to say, "Holy is the Lord God Almighty, and any true sense of holiness we can have is a derivation of that." That's an awfully philosophical-theological way to put it.

However, I grant your claim.

That's the truth, but it's hard to digest because of our own frame of reference as limited beings. We find it easier to grasp the claim as a straight predication. One always has to be cautious when applying humanly-experienced categories to God, as if we came first. And that is, indeed, the core problem with Euthyphro, too: it requires the suppostion that "holiness" is a quality that could potentially exist and be defined if God did not ever exist.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Factually, to say "Holiness is a property of God" is actually to make a statement about one's own 'holiness'.

Um...no, no, it's not. It means that God is holy. It doesn't even predicate a single thing about the speaker. Wow. Do I have to actually SAY anything that obvious? Doesn't the grammar give it to you?

It likely goes over your head. Essentially, psychologically, the sort of 'declarations' about god's greatness and power (one can see this in Islam more easily) seems to be more about self-declarations of the greatness of those who worship that god-concept.

I assume that you are blind to seeing things in this way. And I assume you are blind to seeing yourself. This is an operative tenet to my idea about you).

I think we have to examine the *function* of these sorts of theological declarations.

What is your actual relationship to God?

I like where things are going here.

It should be relatively plain by this point that I do not subscribe to the belief-system to which you are subscribed. I see it, I recognize it, I believe I understand its function, but I do not regard it as having validity-in-itself. It is a god-construct.

I cannot give power or authority to a *god-construct* and, as a result of my realizations, I am forced to speak as I do speak: heretically.

You seem to me to be a chemically-pure example of one who is wedded, through an act of your own will, to that construct. You mistake the constructed thing as being 'real'. But I say it is not. This idea is, obviously, intolerable to you. To accept my idea would result in a melt-down. I understand this.

So then, if I am to describe what my *relationship* to god is, I have to define what god is and what the word god refers to. But doing so I will only present you with another level of concept, a variation of god-conceptualization.

What I can say is that the entire notion of what *god* is is in flux. I do not mean to say that this is so for bona fide practicisg Christian (or Jewish) religionists, and I mean it in a philosophical-theological sense. I do not think *we* have a linguistic means to offer a sufficient definition of 'god'.

What I have come to is that I think god-concepts are part-and-parcel of man's psyche. So it is to the psyche of man that one must turn one's focus if one is going to define god. In my way of seeing, everything depends on the psyche. Those who have read what I write know that I tend to use a definition of 'soul' that is not entirely distinct from the Christian concept. But I tend to see it as 'divine spark' or something that, through a mystery I cannot fathom, has a relationship to god, though I prefer a less personalized term. In fact I really do not like the term god anymore and find it a conceptual obstruction.

What is my relationship to that? I'm so glad you asked!