woke

[Immanuel Can]

Maybe God wants you to extinguish me because I won't worship him. Who knows?

Well, that's not the God of the Bible or of Christians, so I can't answer you with reference to any God I believe in. He's already expressed His intention toward you...so I have no reason to second-guess that.

In any case, I applaud your reluctance to commit violence.

Oh, well, you can spare the applause for me. I'm nothing special. It's not my "reluctance" or superior moral character that's responsible; it's God's concern to be doing that which is harmonious with God's will and nature. I'm just responding to the conception of God I have...as, ultimately, does every person. The best security against violence in the name of some religious cause is the right conception of God.

But given the history of Atheist violence, the denial of God would be a terrible alternative...and actually more likely that a bad conception of the Divine to result in you being harmed in the name of some ghastly and specious self-worshipping ideology. Look at the Wokies in Portland, or Atlanta, or Baltimore, or Kenosha, or Los Angeles, or San Francisco, or Chicago, or Minneapolis... Where, in their cloaking by night, their ganging up, their burning of cars and businesses, their storming through the streets, their throwing of Molotov cocktails and their violent outbursts of verbal hatred picked up quickly and advanced by the mass media do you detect a burgeoning spirit of love and understanding? Can you see how quickly they turn to viciousness in the name of their conception of "justice"? Is it really a spirit of love of mankind, or of raging hatred and bitterness that animates them? I think you can see.

People who have no God quickly look to political arrangments to issue in their "heaven": and they're not at alll reluctant or impeded in their urge to bully, brutalize and kill in the name of making it happen. (Of course, it never does; but that just means they start to feel they haven't tried hard enough; and so the pile of corpses rises.)

There is nobody who gets away from worship. The Atheist who rejects God will worship at a different shrine, but he's still going to have to worship: because human beings cannot organize their own lives without referrring constantly to a hierarchy of values, and those values have to come from somewhere. When they don't come from God, they come from man driven by his own inner demons.

As the great Bob Dylan so precisely put it: "You gonna serve somebody. And it may be the Devil, and it may be the Lord; still, you gonna serve somebody." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC10VWDTzmU

Wokies worship. They don't know what they worship, maybe (though certainly some of their deliberate manipulators do), but they all worship anyway.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Heck, maybe I'm an Edomite. I don't know all of whom my ancestors slept with.

Who gets to define “Edom”? For supersessionists :

Supersessionism, also called replacement theology or fulfillment theology, is a Christian theology which describes the theological conviction that the Christian Church has superseded the Jews and the nation of Israel, assuming their role as God's covenanted people, thus asserting that the New Covenant through Jesus Christ has superseded or replaced the Mosaic covenant exclusive to Jews. Supersessionist theology also holds that the universal Christian Church has succeeded ancient Israel as God's true Israel and that Christians have succeeded the ancient Israelites as the people of God.

Few who write on this forum are grasping the complex, but consequential inner dimensions of this belief- and narrative-complex as it is playing out today.

Who gets to be Jacob? And then who is Esau? These can be seen in racialist terms (Judaism invented real racism) but it is moreover an issue of metaphysical persuasion. Something ‘spiritual’ — mental, intellectual, ideational — but transcending specificity.

Immanuel believes himself to be a descendent of Jacob. That is why he and he alone has ‘the righteous voice’ in these discussions. So many flies and stained cockroaches come after him but like David he holds his ground! Surely this man is blessed!

My view? These are mind-games of an amazingly bizarre order. Once that is seen one has, by definition, ascended from the bottom of the Cave of Thralldom to the next level up.

Really you assholes should sign up for my ten week email course! It’s only $9.99 a week!

I guarantee relative normalcy to those who successfully complete the course!

[commonsense]

one does not say no to the creator of the cosmos.

Heck, even if it WERE the creator of the cosmos, I wouldn't do it without an unequivocally clear and sufficient reason. For all I know, given this world, the creator of the cosmos may not have good intentions.

Then I would have to smite you, you're too rational to be a Christian!

But seriously, Gary’s conflict in this thought experiment lies in the risk that an all powerful being might take umbrage to a mere mortal’s refusal to obey a command. There could be serious consequences for that refusal.

[commonsense]

And the easiest scenario in which God wants Gary to be killed is the scenario in which God’s motives are completely unknowable.

Except that's not the world I live in. In the world in which I live, God has spoken and has made a whole bunch of things about Himself and His wishes known, such as "Thou shalt not murder," for a start. So I think Gary's talking about something that for me, can't happen.

It’s a thought experiment. Like the Trolley Problem, no one claims it is real.

[Alexis Jacobi]

In my world the all-powerful has sent The Red Planet Hercolubus on a crash course with Earth. Day by day, minute by minute, it careens closer!

There will be gnashing of teeth let me tell you!

Hercolubus, a planet so called by the sages of antiquity, is approaching our Solar System and is the cause of great concern for those who know about such cosmic phenomena. In our former encounter, Hercolubus put an end to the Atlantean civilisation. These facts are duly related through all the “Universal Floods” of different religions and cultures. The consequence of the very close proximity of Hercolubus will be great upheaval in all corners of our planet. The internal fire will bring about innumerable volcanoes and earthquakes. When Hercolubus is very close, a complete revolution of the Earth’s axis will take place. Throughout all the ages, great sages have thoroughly investigated the return of the “Red planet” and have alerted us about this cosmic phenomenon. The last great testimony was that of V.M. Rabolu, who left a universal message to humanity through his work “Hercolubus or Red planet”

[Immanuel Can]

For supersessionists :

Supersessionism, also called replacement theology or fulfillment theology, is a Christian theology...

Not quite.

Supersessionism is a heresy, actually. And an attempt to "make it work" theologically results in such massacre of the text that whole swaths of the Bible are rendered impossible to interpret. However, Supersessionism is the dominant theology of things like the Catholic organization; so that explains the 1933 Concordat with Hitler, for example. It also explains why Catholicism has had to abandon textual adherence in favour of ecclesiastical pronouncements, and to replace God's authority with the Papacy. The Biblical text won't support a Supersessionist reading.

That's yet another demonstration of the fact that having a definition of "Christian" is important to being able to make accurate claims.

Immanuel believes himself to be a descendent of Jacob.

Which "Immanuel"?

I don't, actually. At least, not in any literal sense, though I would serve the same God. Jacob was Jewish; I am not, to my knowledge.

Funny that you didn't even think to ask. When one attempts to be dogmatic about what another believes, perhaps that would be a first step...

[Alexis Jacobi]

Supersessionism is a heresy, actually.

Depending on who does the defining that could be the case. But it is pretty irrelevant really and I mean for those who are engaged in this weird conversation with you, where you are protagonist and we are antagonistic to your general program.

But here is the key: the entire Jewish-Christian construct, being a bizarre Ponzi-scheme of the mind, is 'heretical' to the philosophical and metaphysical stance that a truly awakened and aware man must develop and *live within*.

You see this is what, inadvertently, you have caused me to realize. In my view we all need to see and to realize the depth and degree to which we are *subsumed* as I say within these thought-constructs. And there, in that thought-construct, is the god-concept which I certainly separate from some sort of god-personality of the sort that you are deeply involved in.

In my way of seeing, once one has pulled at least some of the major threads from the cloth and the fabric of *belief*, and when the cloth has unraveled somewhat, then one notices that it is really *barking mad-men* that are fighting an imagined war with imagined notions of a personalized divinity.

Now, I say that it is that that must be unraveled but I do not recommend this undertaking for everyone. Or to put it differently I see it is dangerous even calamitous.

There are two principal poles that encapsulate the choices available: One, to thoroughly abandon any idea of *god* and simply forget about it to the degree that one can; or Two, to try to work out some sort of description of divinity, say at a metaphysical level, that transcends any sort of image that the mind requires in this imaginary game of 'visualizing god'.

The whole question turns back to that of how we ponder Existence. I mean the fact that we are alive and aware with special emphasis placed on awareness. As aware, conscious beings who are, for reasons hard to fathom, encased for a limited time in perishable mortal bodies so easily harmed and extinguished.

The metaphor of The Cave is ever-useful. You for example can be described as someone sitting down in the first row of seats where you view, and actually believe in, the mental images that pass in and through your mind. Your entire 'visualization' is your thralldom! You are stuck in it as 'reality'. But when the cave-metaphor is employed, as an intellectual and existential tool, one succeeds in *turning the neck around* and understands projection and projectors. You cannot go this route. And so, because you are a prisoner you insist, with terrible accompanying threats, that anyone who tries to escape the clutches that you are in, will meet a horrifying (also imagined) fate.

You correspond, without seeing it, without understanding it, to a Prison Guard within a mental construct. But, the mental construct is indeed very consequential and determining in the Real World as it plays out in time and in history.

You believe that you POSSESS the only valid god-concept. All other god-concepts are demonic. And following the Hebrew impetous all demonic god-concepts are to be destroyed. The Prison Guard comes forward to be sure that no rebellious idea-construct, and one that could counter and antidote the one that has possessed you, can develop ideational power.

But I think other god-concepts are certainly possible. That is, it is not the either-or that you establish in your binary and tendentious argumentation.

The only way that I know to get perspective on the god-question is to examine them comparatively. Then, one might see that what one is seeing is a system through which perception is ordered. But a 'system' is not reality! It is just a picture. But like the picture that flashes on the wall of the Cave there must be a projector. And so understanding what that projector is -- what it is, how it functions, and why succumbing to its thrall is a prison-like experience -- then becomes the necessary activity.

All of this will, and must, go without any comment from you -- though you say you are involved in philosophy. For this reason I see you in so many ways as a neophyte in 'the really important things'.

My email course is open to you Immanuel! I canot force you to sign up, I cannot force you to read -- these are steps you must take as a man and of your own volition. Please, find that volition. I promise to help you move to the Next Level!

[Immanuel Can]

Supersessionism is a heresy, actually.

Depending on who does the defining that could be the case.

It is.

[Gary Childress]

Supersessionism is a heresy, actually. And an attempt to "make it work" theologically results in such massacre of the text that whole swaths of the Bible are rendered impossible to interpret. However, Supersessionism is the dominant theology of things like the Catholic organization; so that explains the 1933 Concordat with Hitler, for example. It also explains why Catholicism has had to abandon textual adherence in favour of ecclesiastical pronouncements, and to replace God's authority with the Papacy. The Biblical text won't support a Supersessionist reading.

The NT was apparently God changing his mind on some things. How do you know God hasn't changed his mind again? Maybe God doesn't mind if people don't worship him so long as we don't harm each other. The NT was basically selected and edited by clerics of the Roman Empire. If the Romans can do it, maybe someone else can come along and better articulate God's latest whims. What if some guy in China pops up and says he's God or God's prophet and there has been a change of plans regarding the 2nd coming? Or maybe the Krishnas are on to something or someone else is. I mean, I'd worship God if I had it in me. However, I wasn't born and raised going to Sunday school and I haven't had much in the way of inclination to or evidence for the existence of God. I have my feelings toward God and they haven't changed much in 55 years. Perhaps I'm just SOL?

[Immanuel Can]

Maybe God doesn't mind if people don't worship him so long as we don't harm each other.

Well, Gary, if we suppose there is a God, we really have two options: either He cares, or He doesn't. If He doesn't, it doesn't matter what you and I believe...it will change nothing, either way. However, if He does, and if we don't suppose His whole reason for creation is to make a bunch of animals that are just "not harmful" (which is manifestly a kind of vague and merely-negative sort of thing), then it seems much more reasonable to think He had something considerably above that in mind, something more positive.

However, if what the Bible tells us is worth considering as a possibility at all, then much more is indeed what God intended in creating us.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Wokies worship. They don't know what they worship, maybe (though certainly some of their deliberate manipulators do), but they all worship anyway.

Some posts back I explained why in truth you are *woke* and why I believe you must be examined and thought about as we examine a *woke* present and the people, and the power-systems, that are determining it and directing it.

You 'worship' an imagined construct -- an entire theatre of the mind -- which you can do nought else but to regard as *absolutely real*. To the degree to which thousands and millions and possibly billions get involved in that construct and believe in it with you, is the degree that it has real determining power.

You are very right to point out that those Portland and rampaging 'wokies' and indeed a subculture in America and in the world have fallen out of a conforming religiosity to non-belief, and also to a certain loss of their own compass and thus of their own self. And you are also right to propose that dedicated Christian religiosity can 'save' people from lostness and personal drifting. And it is very true that a Christian group and church, with its eyes set on 'healing' and clean living, can pull people back into health. All that is granted.

But you are still stuck within a mental system -- an imagined *world* -- and here, on this forum, and within a supposedly philosophical context it seems our objective is to see through such *imagined worlds*.

Now this does contradict, for numerous reasons, Richard Weaver's proposition that we need and require a 'metaphysical dream of the world'. You and others might think I am trying to *do away* with having and 'believing in' a metaphysical dream. But that is not the case.

I am opposed to the metaphysical dream that you are so deeply wrapped up in because I think there are other and let's say *better ones* that are not only better suited to us -- but also necessary evolutions (in the Nietzschean sense of 'next steps' for a man).

The 'picture' rather like a balloon must be punctured. Indeed it has been punctured for most of us. The Old Picture falls away. The Old Picture cannot (for us) be recovered) though for many in the Global South it becomes a life-raft that they jump on board to gain metaphysical grounding.

Again, none of this can you intelligently comment on. You must pass over it. But for numerous of us here this is what we seem to be involved in: defining next steps.

[Immanuel Can]

Wokies worship. They don't know what they worship, maybe (though certainly some of their deliberate manipulators do), but they all worship anyway.

Some posts back I explained why in truth you are *woke*...

And I found you hilarious.

(In case you don't notice, the length of my responses is a reflection of the interest-level I have in your rambling, off-point palaver. Long answers won't be forthcoming, unless you can find a way to be interesting, at least somewhat accurate, and remotely plausible.)

[Gary Childress]

When one attempts to be dogmatic about what another believes...

Well, we all know that every socialist believes in killing and enslaving others, whether they want to admit it or not. Although I guess to be fair, socialists have to do to their own populations what capitalists tend to use other peoples from distant lands for. Socialist countries don't seem to get involved in as many invasions and foreign wars in order to preserve resource sources.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Gary Childress]

Maybe God doesn't mind if people don't worship him so long as we don't harm each other.

Well, Gary, if we suppose there is a God, we really have two options: either He cares, or He doesn't. If He doesn't, it doesn't matter what you and I believe...it will change nothing, either way. However, if He does, and if we don't suppose His whole reason for creation is to make a bunch of animals that are just "not harmful" (which is manifestly a kind of vague and merely-negative sort of thing), then it seems much more reasonable to think He had something considerably above that in mind, something more positive.

However, if what the Bible tells us is worth considering as a possibility at all, then much more is indeed what God intended in creating us.

I just want to be happy in a way that doesn't harm anyone else. I can only imagine that is what God created me for since that seems to be the main impulse that comes to my mind. If he created me for something else, then he did a bad job at programming.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Wokies worship. They don't know what they worship, maybe (though certainly some of their deliberate manipulators do), but they all worship anyway.

Some posts back I explained why in truth you are *woke*...

And I found you hilarious.

(In case you don't notice, the length of my responses is a reflection of the interest-level I have in your rambling, off-point palaver. Long answers won't be forthcoming, unless you can find a way to be interesting, at least somewhat accurate, and remotely plausible.)

Note that I do not write for you, and since it is not possible to converse with you, I find it best to write in relation to you.

You have not, in relation to what I write or what all others write, ever responded fulsomely and thus philosophically, and most others have been thoroughly worn-out by your adamant refusal to consider the implications of ideas.

You are little more than a religious fanatic, Immanuel. Once this is seen everything becomes more simple. And you are stuck within fanaticism. One cannot speak rationally and intelligently to that. Thus, it is not possible either to speak to you or that you really respond.