Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

There's nothing to "take." It's very simple: the legacy media has contradicted the legacy media. Neither you nor I need say more. It's just the fact.

The legacy media has been, from the very start, always in some degree of self-contradiction.

Well, yes. But "some degree" is a long way from where they are now.

Nowadays, they call things a complete "hoax" or "conspiracy theory" and then reverse and say they're "authentic" and "a scandal." That which is decried as utterly "unscientific" one day is later declared "scientific" and "certain." The legacy media now demands that viewers deny themselves the testimony of their own eyes, and the wit of their own intellect, in order to maintain a narrative the legacy media knows it fabricated.

This is a new extreme. And since the legacy media's authority absolutely depends on their maintaining of at least a general truthfulness and care with the facts, they are sawing at their own legs. But they are trusting in the sheer power of the media they employ to secure them from being caught in their own lies.

What we can see is that they are wrong. There are limits to how much the traditional media can be secured against the leaking-out of contradictions.

[Alexis Jacobi]

This is a new extreme. And since the legacy media's authority absolutely depends on their maintaining of at least a general truthfulness and care with the facts, they are sawing at their own legs. But they are trusting in the sheer power of the media they employ to secure them from being caught in their own lies.

Who tells the truth in your estimation? Are there news outlets that you trust? Which ones? And which journalists can you cite who also tell the truth?

[Immanuel Can]

This is a new extreme. And since the legacy media's authority absolutely depends on their maintaining of at least a general truthfulness and care with the facts, they are sawing at their own legs. But they are trusting in the sheer power of the media they employ to secure them from being caught in their own lies.

Who tells the truth in your estimation? Are there news outlets that you trust? Which ones? And which journalists can you cite who also tell the truth?

Here's the important point: their whole power, their whole raison d'etre, depends on people having some belief that they are receiving "the facts" from the legacy news media. If they stop self-presenting as factual, and put up a banner that says, "Propaganda Organ," they'll lose almost all their audience immediately. They know this.

When they put out two different and contradictory versions of events, and present the first as truth, reason and the voice of sanity, and do exactly the same with the second, then there is no rational person who doesn't know they can't be trusted.

There, my claim stops. I'm not advocating for any legacy news source, nor telling you what else you may trust. I'm saying, "Watch out for the people we all used to believe, the people we all used to look to to tell us the facts, the news, the important stuff; they're not believable anymore...by their own account."

And any rational person knows that's right.

[iambiguous]

Did John Calvin Believe in Free Will?
MATTHEW BARRETT at the TGC website

To begin, Calvin points us to the first sin of Adam and, like Paul in Romans 5, connects the dots from Adam to all of humanity. When Adam sinned he “entangled and immersed his offspring in the same miseries.” Calvin defines original sin as “a hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused into all parts of the soul, which first makes us liable to God’s wrath, then also brings forth in us those works which Scripture calls ‘works of the flesh.’” The result of descending from Adam’s “impure seed” and being “born infected with the contagion of sin” is the pervasive corruption of man’s nature, so that the “whole man is overwhelmed—as by a deluge—from head to foot, so that no part is immune from sin and all that proceeds from him is to be imputed to sin.” As Calvin states elsewhere, “So depraved is [man’s] nature that he can be moved or impelled only to evil.”

Of course, to the best of my knowledge, Calvin wasn't actually there in the Garden of Eden to observe all of this. Like most, he read the account in the Bible. Which he then presumed it to be true because it is the word of God. And then presumed, what, that he must presume this because he did not possess the free will not to?

Again, that's where it always gets tricky. To reject free will is always to reject your own. So whatever you think, feel, say or do in regard to the Christian God you were never able not to. Only, as with most of us, Calvin was not actually able to demonstrate this such that his own account of Adam was indisputably not one that he had opted for autonomously.

And he can only presume that Adam himself was not compelled by God to bring about Original Sin. Or was he? Does an omniscient God already know that Adam would eat the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil? Was he really ever able to opt freely not to?

How can this not be completely confusing without God Himself setting it all straight?

If man has been corrupted as by a deluge, and if sin permeates every recess so that “no part is immune from sin,” then it follows that man’s will is in bondage to sin. “For the will is so overwhelmed by wickedness and so pervaded by vice and corruption that it cannot in any way escape to honorable exertion or devote itself to righteousness.” Consequently, Calvin, with Augustine, does not hesitate to title the will “unfree.”

And yet there are over 2 billion Christians around the globe who don't seem to grasp that. Or, perhaps, in not grasping it, they are unwittingly in sync with God's will?

Let's face it though, sin takes on a whole new meaning if you were never able not to sin. And if, whether you do or do not, the fate of your eternal soul had already been decided by God...at or around the time of the Big Bang?

Still, it really comes down to how Calvin was actually able to demonstrate this beyond insisting that he was never able to demonstrate it beyond being fated to believe it.

I mean, in all seriously, what could you have told him to get around that?

[Alexis Jacobi]

There, my claim stops. I'm not advocating for any legacy news source, nor telling you what else you may trust. I'm saying, "Watch out for the people we all used to believe, the people we all used to look to to tell us the facts, the news, the important stuff; they're not believable anymore...by their own account."

Are you then unable to distinguish what is true (in the sense of analysis of events, etc.) if you have no trustworthy sources?

Why would you stop and make no more statements about how to determine what is true and who can speak truthfully?

Were those we did believe also lying or misrepresenting (the facts, ‘truth’).

Is it then an issue of increased incidence and intensity of mis-truthfulness? Why?

[Immanuel Can]

There, my claim stops. I'm not advocating for any legacy news source, nor telling you what else you may trust. I'm saying, "Watch out for the people we all used to believe, the people we all used to look to to tell us the facts, the news, the important stuff; they're not believable anymore...by their own account."

Are you then unable to distinguish what is true (in the sense of analysis of events, etc.) if you have no trustworthy sources?

Of course not. We all have ways of knowing things, from our own eyes, to our own wits, to reason and logic and evidence...and we can go to sources that are consistent and reputable, and to checking facts for ourselves, and suspending judgment until we have the facts, or even to taking partisan sources in equal measure, and evaluating them against one another, instead of simply trusting one. But you already know that, I'm certain.

However, we're not talking about any of that. We're talking about legacy news sources, and in particular, the big names that, traditionally, everybody has trusted to deliver to them the facts upon which, say, they base their own voting, support particular social initiatives, gather their personal stock of beliefs, and organize their medical or personal decisions.

A news source that self-presents as authoritative and utterly reliable one day, then simply reverses itself the next -- and all that without apology, retraction of admission of failure -- is clearly not something anybody should be trusting.

Hardly a controversial conclusion. It's common sense.

[Immanuel Can]

Did John Calvin Believe in Free Will?

Most Christians are not Calvinists.

If man has been corrupted as by a deluge, and if sin permeates every recess so that “no part is immune from sin,” then it follows that man’s will is in bondage to sin. “For the will is so overwhelmed by wickedness and so pervaded by vice and corruption that it cannot in any way escape to honorable exertion or devote itself to righteousness.” Consequently, Calvin, with Augustine, does not hesitate to title the will “unfree.”

And yet there are over 2 billion Christians around the globe who don't seem to grasp that.

That's just what Calvinists (or to be precise,"UltraCalvinists," since even most Calvinists do not fully agree with Calvin) think is the case. It is not what Christians generally believe, and with good reason: it's actually merely the philosophy of Determinism, a doctrine denied by the Bible itself, in multiple, clear passages. Calvin was simply in error.

Let's face it though, sin takes on a whole new meaning if you were never able not to sin.

According to Christianity, you are "never able not to" do a whole bunch of things. You're not able to create yourself, you're not able to dictate your own potentialities, gifts, abilities and circumstances, you're not capable of securing your own survival, you're not able to keep yourself from sinning, and you're not able to prevent death...and you're not able to escape the Final Judgment of God, either. In all these ways, you are quite in the grip of something beyond yourself.

Left to its own devices, the self is quite in trouble. Hence, Christians believe in what they call "salvation," which means "being saved." If you are "saved," it isn't you, by definition, that does it. And the Bible is quite clear that's the case: see Ephesians 2:8-9, for example. Or Titus 3:5. It is in the "beyond the self" alone that one can secure one's future.

Being "saved" means that God takes you out of a situation in which you were personally powerless and doomed. It does not mean you polished yourself up and became good enough for God to like you, without you being "saved." A "saved" person, like a drowning swimmer, is not rescued by his own efforts but by the intervention of Another with the strength to save.

All he can do is appeal for rescue. Rescue himself, he cannot. But he is not fated or doomed, because the power to make that appeal remains with him.

[iambiguous]

Does God Exist?
William Lane Craig says there are good reasons for thinking that He does.

Why did the universe come into being? What brought the universe into existence? There must have been a transcendent cause which brought the universe into being – a cause outside the universe itself.

Again, let's think about this. Here is the author...just like the rest of us. An infinitesimally tiny speck of existence so utterly, utterly minute in the simply immense vastness of all there is...asserting that the universe must have a transcendent cause.

It's not arbitrary, on his part: it's rationally inescapable.

You cannot speak of the "immense vastness of all that IS," without already assuming the premise that something "IS," i.e. something exists. But if that's what you're assuming, then you aren't, by definition, talking about the origins of the universe at all, but of the question, "What else happens, as soon as the universe exists?"

Right. And all Craig does here is to "think up" up God as one possible explanation for existence. As though deducing Him into existence need be as far as one goes in order to prove that He must exist.

That, in my view, is nothing short of preposterous. He provides us with absolutely no hard evidence to demonstrate it.

Then IC deduces the Christian God into existence based on Craig's deductions about the theoretical existence of a God, the God. And his own ludicrous "proof" that the Christian God must exist because it says so in the Christian Bible.

Again, if others here wish to take him seriously, be my guest. To me, aside from being entertained in exposing him, he is an object lesson I can use to note for others the "comforting and consoling" embodiment of the "psychology of objectivism".

Unless, of course, clinically, he does have an actual "condition". And thus it is all basically "beyond his control". Or, perhaps, we do live in a wholly determined universe, and it is beyond the control of all of us.

Or, here, Immanual Can's "proof" that the Christian God must exist because it says so in the Bible and the Bible must be true because it is the Word of God. Well, and the videos, of course.

Did you watch any? They're not just "videos." Each one presents an argument.

As I noted above [way back] let him note the most persuasive argument in any of the videos that might be an incentive for me to watch it. Actual hard evidence that the Christian God does in fact reside in Heaven. Otherwise, there are a zillion YouTube videos arguing in a "world of words" that one or another God does exist.

We can summarize this argument thus far as follows:

1. The universe began to exist.

2. If the universe began to exist, then the universe has a transcendent cause.

3. Therefore, the universe has a transcendent cause.

You'd better say what you mean by "transcendent," if this is going to hold as a fair representation of the argument. It's evident from the earlier, that you aren't sure.

Huh?

I didn't make that point, Craig did. Again, an argument...a deduction...a "thought up" conclusion based on his own set of assumptions regarding the existence of existence itself.

What I noted above was this:

And thus philosophically God is deduced into existence. Immanuel Can merely takes this "logic" further by deducing the Christian God into existence. In other words, not your God if you are not a Christian.

If you want to, you can argue that the Original Cause, the "Thing" that created the universe, or the "Thing" that accounts for the fact that the universe now exists, was not personal, not conscious, not intelligent, not all-powerful, and thus not like God...but that's an argument you'd have to make in such a way as to show it is even possibly cogent.

Go ahead, if you can. I'd be interested in seeing it.

No, I don't want to "argue" with the likes of him. Why? Because I have no respect at all for his intelligence. Let others here that do carry on in that futile endeavor. Instead, I am interested in exploring the evidence, the proof, the empirical confirmation from the God World folks here that can be noted in regard to the factors that I myself am most interested in pursuing:

1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious/spiritual path
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path

And here, given my own frame of mind, IC is absolutely worthless in regard to sustaining intelligent exchanges.

To me I use him in order to note to others just how shallow the thinking of some can be in defending actual denominational religions like Christianity.

By the very nature of the case, that cause of the physical universe must be an immaterial (i.e., non-physical) being. Now there are only two types of things that could possibly fit that description: either an abstract object like a number, or an unembodied mind/consciousness. But abstract objects don’t stand in causal relations to physical things. The number 7, for example, has no effect on anything. Therefore the cause of the universe is an unembodied mind. Thus again we are brought, not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe, but to its Personal Creator.

There you go: that's the problem with the explanation you might try to offer, suggesting a "transcendent-but-not-intelligent" cause for the universe's existence.

Again, the above is Craig's point, not mine. My point is this:

I figured mathematics would come to factor into this somehow.

It does. It makes the argument a slam-dunk, actually.

See what I mean? His ridiculous "circular logic" above is the equivalent of 1 + 1 = the Christian God.

Now let's factor his "slam-dunk" "mathematical" argument for the Christian God's existence into this:

"...an endless procession of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and tornadoes and hurricanes and great floods and great droughts and great fires and deadly viral and bacterial plagues and miscarriages and hundreds and hundreds of medical and mental afflictions and extinction events...making life on Earth a living hell for countless millions of men, women and children down through the ages...

[Immanuel Can]

Does God Exist?
William Lane Craig says there are good reasons for thinking that He does.

Why did the universe come into being? What brought the universe into existence? There must have been a transcendent cause which brought the universe into being – a cause outside the universe itself.

Again, let's think about this. Here is the author...just like the rest of us. An infinitesimally tiny speck of existence so utterly, utterly minute in the simply immense vastness of all there is...asserting that the universe must have a transcendent cause.

It's not arbitrary, on his part: it's rationally inescapable.

You cannot speak of the "immense vastness of all that IS," without already assuming the premise that something "IS," i.e. something exists. But if that's what you're assuming, then you aren't, by definition, talking about the origins of the universe at all, but of the question, "What else happens, as soon as the universe exists?"

Right. And all Craig does here is to "think up" up God as one possible explanation for existence.

No, not at all. Rather, he keeps both possibilities in mind: that there is an impersonal cause for the universe, or an intelligent Cause. He doesn't eliminate the former until later, and not without good reason to do so.

As though deducing Him into existence need be as far as one goes in order to prove that He must exist.

He does not say this, nor does he do it.

He provides us with absolutely no hard evidence to demonstrate it.

That's actually untrue. He provides us with mathematics. And while he doesn't put this explicitly, his point depends on causality as well, which is a fundamental of scientific reasoning.

Did you watch any? They're not just "videos." Each one presents an argument.

As I noted above [way back] let him note the most persuasive argument in any of the videos that might be an incentive for me to watch it.

That's hilarious.

You just admitted you haven't watched any of them. So much for your alleged interest in evidence.

I'm so amused...but I have to confess, not surprised.

But you should. It's not rational to dismiss something you haven't even seen.

We can summarize this argument thus far as follows:

1. The universe began to exist.

2. If the universe began to exist, then the universe has a transcendent cause.

3. Therefore, the universe has a transcendent cause.

You'd better say what you mean by "transcendent," if this is going to hold as a fair representation of the argument. It's evident from the earlier, that you aren't sure.

Huh?

I didn't make that point, Craig did.

Yes: but you must make sure that they way you are using the word "transcendent" is exactly the same as the way in which he is using it, or your criticisms will miss the mark completely.

If you want to, you can argue that the Original Cause, the "Thing" that created the universe, or the "Thing" that accounts for the fact that the universe now exists, was not personal, not conscious, not intelligent, not all-powerful, and thus not like God...but that's an argument you'd have to make in such a way as to show it is even possibly cogent.

Go ahead, if you can. I'd be interested in seeing it.

No, I don't want to "argue" with the likes of him. Why? Because I have no respect at all for his intelligence.

Ad hominem.

Craig is a PhD, a multi-published, peer-reviewed author and a popular lecturer; and by all of his peers' account, both secular and religious, a formitable thinker. So if you dismiss him, you must think he, and they, are all fools by comparison to yourself.

I'll let others judge that.

[Alexis Jacobi]

and we can go to sources that are consistent and reputable...

Righto. Can you mention one or two of those?

[Immanuel Can]

Instead, I am interested in exploring the evidence, the proof, the empirical confirmation from the God World folks here that can be noted in regard to the factors that I myself am most interested in pursuing:

1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious/spiritual path
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path

Ah, now I get it!

I mean, I now get why:

a) even when your questions have already been asked-and-answered, you keep asking them, as if they had not.
b) you don't want to watch the videos, and want to dismiss guys like Craig and I ad hominem, no matter what.
c) why you do what nobody else seems to do -- call on an imagined "audience" of people who are supposedly hanging on your every word
d) resort to caricatures of Christianity, and to ancient objections that are debunked on multiple websites as well as this one...if only you cared to check
e) as soon as you are in danger of finding yourself down a cul-de-sac, rationally speaking, you tend to switch "audiences" and talk to the supposed people out there, whom you believe to be tracking this exchange and admiring your performance.
e) why you pose as just entertaining yourself, and as not serious, whenever you seem rationally cornered, rather than seeming to be somebody actually interested in what is being discussed. You're saying, "I have no investment in this conversation. I can't be defeated, because I'm not listening. And I'm not listening because I've already decided none of this is worth my considered attention."
f) why the answer to everything, you think, is "dasein," a word you can't even define. It's just supposed to explain everything...and hence, nothing.

All of that makes sense, now.

I see. You don't want answers.

You're not interested.

You want to be able to self-present as a successful cynic and objector, and preen in front of your imagined "audience," and to think of yourself as taken by them for having made your point. And you actually believe that's what's happening.

Got it. It all makes sense, now. It explains every bit of your behaviour thus far.

Well, I'll invest a lot less energy in answering, then. It's not a dinner-theatre in which I think I care to participate.

[Immanuel Can]

and we can go to sources that are consistent and reputable...

Righto. Can you mention one or two of those?

General epistemology is not my subject here. I have answers to that question, but to go into them would merely be a distraction from the main point. You can do your own looking into that, if you think you need to. I doubt you do.

My subject is the legacy media, and their inconsistency with themselves. And I don't think anybody can any longer doubt that.

[henry quirk]

Christianity is a series of Institutions. Just a matter of scale and success.

All you see (and abhor) is the institution: the thinkin' (that which is Christianity; that which the institution corrupts) is invisible to you.

The dictionary definition of a Christian is one who follows Christ; kind, kindly, Christ-like. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation for good, with the right of secession. A Christian anarchist is therefore one who turns the other cheek, overturns the tables of the moneychangers, and does not need a cop to tell him how to behave. A Christian anarchist does not depend upon bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One-Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused, and dying world.

A Christian anarchist has no business belonging to such a reactionary organization [the Catholic Church]. I do not believe in original sin, indulgences, the infallibility of the pope, or obedience to any church official if it is against my conscience. I am not interested in earning "merit" or in being saved by priestly incantation. Ammon Hennacy I quote Hennacy most often as a representative for the Christian anarchists becuz he was plain-spoken and not readily misinterpreted

[Alexis Jacobi]

and we can go to sources that are consistent and reputable...

Righto. Can you mention one or two of those?

General epistemology is not my subject here. I have answers to that question, but to go into them would merely be a distraction from the main point. You can do your own looking into that, if you think you need to. I doubt you do.

My subject is the legacy media, and their inconsistency with themselves. And I don't think anybody can any longer doubt that.

The main point is just that.

If you wrote more on important topics, both topical and intellectual, your posts would be much more interesting. You avoid the more interesting possibilities.

In any case: you have no sources that you could present as being in your opinion reputable.

It was clear you’d not cough up ….

[Sculptor]

Christianity is a series of Institutions. Just a matter of scale and success.

All you see (and abhor) is the institution: the thinkin' (that which is Christianity; that which the institution corrupts) is invisible to you.

The dictionary definition of a Christian is one who follows Christ; kind, kindly, Christ-like. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation for good, with the right of secession. A Christian anarchist is therefore one who turns the other cheek, overturns the tables of the moneychangers, and does not need a cop to tell him how to behave. A Christian anarchist does not depend upon bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One-Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused, and dying world.

A Christian anarchist has no business belonging to such a reactionary organization [the Catholic Church]. I do not believe in original sin, indulgences, the infallibility of the pope, or obedience to any church official if it is against my conscience. I am not interested in earning "merit" or in being saved by priestly incantation. Ammon Hennacy I quote Hennacy most often as a representative for the Christian anarchists becuz he was plain-spoken and not readily misinterpreted

You are in denial of the facts of history.
From witch burning to scalp hunting to strange fruit on Southern trees, to priests buggering children; Christianity gave them all to America.