"And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse."

[Immanuel Can]

I knew you'd say so. But it's obviously not. Go and look at all the "proud" Atheists that are around. Dawkins didn't get an international bestseller because his patter found no sympathetic audience. Lots of people want to pretend they know God doesn't exist, and to exhort others to think the same.

Obviously people who are taking on the role as atheists and are arguing for atheism are different from the people who just go about their lives not engaging in debates. Even people who come to philosophy forums are not representative. Of course there are atheists who are as you described, but most of the ones I've known would rather go to the dentist than tell someone they shouldn't believe in God.

I recognize that many don't want to talk about it at all...usually because they're not at all sure of their case...which they shouldn't be. But there are tons who do want to talk about it, incessantly, even.

They sure are. They're the Atheist "posterboys." The Atheist set loves those guys,

How do you know what most atheists think about the people who are posterboys?

Because they buy their books and attend their lectures, and praise them to the skies. The numbers tell the tale.

just like they used to love Anthony Flew and laud him as the leading Atheist apologist -- until he threw over his own Atheism and became a Deist. After that, they hated him and made all kinds of excuses for why they had changed their minds. Or consider the reception Nagel's gotten: he's still an Atheist, but the Atheists hate him because they accuse him of undermining the chief argument they hope to hold up against Theism...Evolutionism. It seems the Atheist set will happily eat their own.

and Christians disown other people and say they are not real Christians.

Well, whether those are "Christians" is the matter under contention. One doesn't just get to join the club by saying, "I'm a Christian," you know: there are criteria, Biblically given, for who is and who is not. And that outsiders don't care about those criteria doesn't make them not criteria.

You're generalizing from some atheists.

I've said so, in fact. But it's a warranted generalization. There are clearly a great mass of the small number of actual Atheists around who are pretty evangelistic in promoting their anti-gospel.

Those guys didn't get voted into the positions they are in.

If a "vote" is understood as buying their books, attending their lectures and praising them, then yes, they get voted in.

I always say Good morning to our postman who is Catholic. That's just not going to get media attention.

Why should it? That's basic politeness, and has zero to do with his religion. We should treat all people well, especially those with whom we may disagree. That's the badge of a civil society.

[Immanuel Can]

I don't know where to go and look for them.

The bookstore, the lecture hall and the internet. Take your pick. You'll find lots of evidence of them.

But Dawkins, "and company", aren't exactly typical atheists are they.

They sure are.

Okay, so you are talking about the typical atheists who write books and give lectures about atheism? There must be more of them than I realised.

Well, somebody's buying the books...

There is nothing to prevent all of them from being wrong, though,

That is also true...until we roll in Atheism to the group.

I'm surprised you would want to be part of a group that contained atheists.

I regard Atheism as a "religion," because like all such, it requires faith, and because it is yet another position on the question of the existence of God.

But this can be simplified. There are only three possibilities:

Theism: "There is a God."
Polytheism: "There are many gods."
Atheism: "There is no gods or God."

What you can see is that, whatever else may be true, two of the three have to be wrong. They have to. Because there is no other position available. That set covers all rational options.

I couldn't possibly comply with all the requirements of all the existing religions,

Right. So if you do nothing, then you're "complying with the requirements" of Atheism. You may remain uncommitted and unsettled in your own mind as to what the truth is, like an agnostic, but you're factually going to align yourself with the Atheists. That's not a safe position, but it's certainly a position one can take.

[Gary Childress]

Natural laws. . . which are mere human observations of regularities, as if they were something inviolable and sacred. They're not.

If you say so.

Not because I say so. That IS what they are.

I see. So natural laws are not "inviolable" and "sacred"? You've of course witnessed this. Or maybe it says so in the Bible.

[Janoah]

It is said that 'goodness is rewarded'.
In what manner? In a natural way.

"It is said?" "It is said by whom?"

Who will "bless"? Natural law does not "bless." .

I agree with nemos answer,

Natural mechanisms even try hard to encourage us to do the right things and not to do the wrong things. By punishing us with hunger if we forget to eat and blessing us with endorphins if we do, overeating is similarly punished with nausea.

And also, if there are mechanisms of nature unknown to us, they do not violate the natural Law, and most importantly, there is no reason to believe in absurdities.

[Lacewing]

There are only three possibilities:

Theism: "There is a God."
Polytheism: "There are many gods."
Atheism: "There is no gods or God."

What you can see is that, whatever else may be true, two of the three have to be wrong. They have to.
Because there is no other position available. That set covers all rational options.

Rationally, it seems unlikely that a supposed 'source' or 'cause' of such manifestations we experience can be knowable by the pea-brain of any human ego. So, your 'three possibilities' are pretty much meaningless.

[Harbal]

I don't know where to go and look for them.

The bookstore, the lecture hall and the internet. Take your pick. You'll find lots of evidence of them.

Okay, but I've forgotten why we are looking for them now.

Okay, so you are talking about the typical atheists who write books and give lectures about atheism? There must be more of them than I realised.

Well, somebody's buying the books...

Well I assume that people still buy the Bible, but that doesn't mean they are all religious fanatics, does it?

I'm surprised you would want to be part of a group that contained atheists.

I regard Atheism as a "religion,"

I can't really see how it's a religion, but I suppose you can regard it however you like.

But this can be simplified. There are only three possibilities:

Theism: "There is a God."
Polytheism: "There are many gods."
Atheism: "There is no gods or God."

Apatheism: Don't really care.

What you can see is that, whatever else may be true, two of the three have to be wrong. They have to. Because there is no other position available. That set covers all rational options.

I don't think there is a God, and I'd rather not waste too much time thinking about it, so I'll leave it to those who are interested.

I couldn't possibly comply with all the requirements of all the existing religions,

Right. So if you do nothing, then you're "complying with the requirements" of Atheism.

Well if I am. they're not very demanding requirements.

You may remain uncommitted and unsettled in your own mind as to what the truth is, like an agnostic, but you're factually going to align yourself with the Atheists.

Life would become very complicated if I had to consciously align myself with all the people who weren't involved in the same activities I'm not involved in.

[Immanuel Can]

It is said that 'goodness is rewarded'.
In what manner? In a natural way.

"It is said?" "It is said by whom?"

Who will "bless"? Natural law does not "bless."

I agree with nemos answer,

He didn't answer that question.

Why didn't you?

Never mind. I know. On the one hand, you can't risk the claim that Israel is not special. On the other hand, saying WHY they are special would require you to believe in divine intervention. So you prefer not to answer the question.

And for me, that's okay. I'm not anybody special. But you owe yourself, and you owe HaShem your answer.

I'll leave you to it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

If you wish to know where, or how, I orient myself, or how I solve these problems and challenges -- well that is a separate question.

I'd still be interested in knowing that.

There are a few recently posts of mine, in other places, where I find I am thinking about and trying to answer the question I believe you are asking. For me it is not a simple issue and the reason is because my entire outlook is being/has been remodeled. And since the reason I write here (as I have said many times) is exclusively for my own purposes and benefit, it does not matter much to me if I can, in a given moment, only offer a partial picture or a tentative one.

This morning I was reading GK Chesterton -- a defining voice in the Christian tradition. He wrote:

"...this round world of ours is but an egg brooded upon by a sacred unbegotten bird; the mystic dove of the prophets."

It occurred to me that this very interesting, and very revealing phrase, could be a beginning point to offer a picture of where my own thinking tends.

But let's start with a statement of the obvious: On this forum, in this thread, there is one person who works with the outlining idea that Chesterton expresses. That is Immanuel Can. He has tempted you a dozen times now to "contradict God" -- and he perversely uses the Jewish term HaShem to manipulate you. "Deny your own culture's God" he says to you.

So "God" is understood to be that 'unbegotten bird' brooding over the entire Earth, the Earth's manifestation, beginning and the Earth's end. The idea expressed by Chesterton is also expressed in Isaiah:

So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

If I am opposed to both Jewish and Christian ideological imperiousness, must I then reject the large and fantastical idea that is expressed by Isaiah and re-expressed by Chesterton and all Jewish and Christian believers?

My answer is yes and no. Let me start first with the *yes* portion. At least right now, and for reasons that are visible and intelligible to all, both Judaism and Christianity are deeply involved in social and political games and battles. You cannot disassociate either from the concrete and tangible affairs of the world. Presently, when we examine Israel and 'the shining city on the hill', we see that it is all a perverse and immoral mess. The very state of Israel is unlikely to make it through what it is now setting itself up for. That so well known Israeli arrogance will be knocked on its ass. This is a very serious matter but from where I sit I do not get the sense that people realize the implications.

Christian Zionism -- the chief aider and abettor of present-day Israel -- has involved itself with a tremendous *evil* (if you will allow me that word). Doing so, it demonstrates that what it stands for, its absurd interpretation of metaphysical truths, is a sheer farce. Now, if there is such a god as both Judaism and Christianity propose, and if this god is a god of wrath and corrective punishment, then it stands to reason that all who support Israel, all who contribute to it, will be rewarded with annihilation. I say this not because I *believe in* this punishing god but because both Judaism and Christianity do! So my view is that when you get to the heart of the *picture* as I call it that the religion diagrams, what you find there is *the heart of darkness* and not that which it is purported to be: a light.

There is a weird contradictory absurdity here that I cannot yet fathom. The self-styled declaration of being *good* when in fact one is not good. The contradiction, of course, is that there is so much in biblical lore and doctrines which, in fact, is 'of the good'.

But here is the core point as far as I am concerned: Judaism and its younger brother Christianity are religions and ideologies of imperative imperiousness. They define themselves through acts of destroying other gods and god-concepts and disrupting people's genuine connection with their own lenses of perception and their metaphysical foundations. Let us be realistic: Israel came to birth through a genocide. This is a fact and a truth that cannot be denied. It is a part of the foundation. What happened once, is necessarily repeated since it is paradigmatic. The re-founding of Israel in our present took shape through an imitation of the biblical model. That is to say through a *divine command* and a divine permission to do so. So let's push this forward and say that *the god of these people* is deeply implicated -- and here I will extend the use of the metaphor -- in the present, on-going genocide in Gaza. The god doing this, inspiring this, directing this, is something else entirely.

Therefore: this is the core idea operative at the heart of Israel. What is really bizarre and paradoxical is the Jewish and the Israeli regard for *life* and the celebration of it. How does one then reconcile that there is a death-cult there at the center of it? It really does contradict the Jewish (and the Christian) self-assertion that they side with the righteous god of light.

So then, what God is this brooding over the world if I return to Chesterton's metaphor?

But let me contextualize what I say here also to how our own Immanuel Can behaves -- what he says, what he does, that which he says he represents and serves. What then is this Idea he has involved himself with? Indeed has become possessed by?

If I choose to conceptually operate within the imaginal paradigm of both Judaism and Christianity I would be forced to say that what we see here are manifestations of Anti-Christ. Again, if I choose to hold to those conceptions (and in fact I choose not to).

Conceptual systems, by their nature, lock us into parameters of determinism in a classical vicious circle.

So I think that you grasp that I do not hold either Judaism or Christianity in the esteem which they believe should be accreted to them. I am not inventing this interpretation through a contrived prejudice. In fact it is all clearly expressed in Genesis! The pattern was set there.

But if I now return to that portion of Isaiah, but disassociate *ownership* of the process of evolutionary growth that is implied in it, what can be done with that? If I am dealing with a metaphysical concept, and associating it with *deity*, I am not sure if I can or should identify the god of Israel and of Christianity as a representative of whatever it is that is meant by the idea of "god". But if I take the idea as real or valid (and I confess that I cannot help but conceive of our human world as really a play within metaphysics and humans as quintessentially metaphysical) I believe that I must transcend the actual matrix.

This does lead, or can lead, to a certain irreverence. A negation of what has been established to be revered.

revere (rɪˈvɪə)
vb
(tr) to be in awe of and respect deeply; venerate: from Latin reverēri, from re- + verērī to fear, be in awe of]

The *mystic dove of the prophets* refers, naturally, to the so-called Holy Spirit: a transforming Intelligence. I can go along with the idea but especially when I separate it from its matrix. Indeed from any socio-political matrix.

There is something I once suggested to Immanuel Can, an idea so far outside of his conceptual order that he could not take it in. It was based on the Greek (Johannine) idea of Logos: an implied or perceived metaphysical underpinning to the concept of god. If indeed "En arkhêi ên ho lógos, kaì ho lógos ên pròs tòn theón, kaì theòs ên ho lógos" [In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God] then this must be a reference to a force that operates throughout the entire Universe.

The thought I had was that whatever the idea expressed, whatever logical order it stood upon, must be reducible and expressible in metaphysical terms. That is, any specific history (such as that on Earth: the biblical story, the enactment) would not be applicable when the ideas are considered.

But then: what are those ideas?

We would have to transcend any specific picture -- Judean, Greek, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, what-have-you -- in order to attempt to get to the core of what is meant.

And then what comes into focus is actually meaning. So, in case it is not obvious, I place *religious story* down there at a lower level in the Platonic Cave: it is what is broadcast onto a screen. But the essential meaning is really of another order.

I realize that in some sense I contradict myself. It would appear that I do believe a "brooding" entity if one wished to see it in this way. I do not think it could actually be named, or possessed, or assigned to one people, or perhaps to any people at all.

[Alexis Jacobi]

And for me, that's okay. I'm not anybody special. But you owe yourself, and you owe HaShem your answer.

I'll leave you to it.

"Senator, you can have my answer now if you like..."

[Immanuel Can]

And for me, that's okay. I'm not anybody special. But you owe yourself, and you owe HaShem your answer.

I'll leave you to it.

"Senator, you can have my answer now if you like..."

No thank you. I find your dramatics rather boring, actually.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I find your dramatics rather boring, actually.

Yes Immanuel, you have made that clear a half dozen times so far. And yet I hope that you understand that I don't give a rat's ass what you think of my ideas or what I write.

Right?

My critique of you, I believe, is quite a bit more devastating: You are a fraud. You are a con-artist. And you are a manipulator. You are exemplary of what a man should not become. I am not bored by you however. I am often appalled though. At the same time you are an astounding teacher. But I cannot see how you would feel any pride at all since you drive people soundly away from what you say you want to influence people to embrace.

Great work!

[Immanuel Can]

I don't give a rat's ass what you think of my ideas or what I write.

Why are you still talking?

[Alexis Jacobi]

I don't give a rat's ass what you think of my ideas or what I write.

Why are you still talking?

Why does it matter to you?

[Immanuel Can]

I don't give a rat's ass what you think of my ideas or what I write.

Why are you still talking?

Why does it matter to you?

Yeah, good point.

[Janoah]

Turkish MP suffers heart attack after warning Israel of 'Allah's wrath'
To others his example is a lesson
recent lesson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THMuDCcN2B8