Christianity

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Age
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Re: Christianity

Post by Age »

promethean75 wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:28 am please let's just not talk about it. i still can't come to terms with my mortality and the oblivion i am bound for, even after all these years.
WHY NOT, EXACTLY?

What DISILLUSION were/are 'you' UNDER?
promethean75 wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:28 am just now in reading this thread i wuz again gripped by that dreadfully cold, pointless and hopeless feeling i get when i am forced to reflect on my death and the eternal nothingness that will follow it.
WHY, EXACTLY?
promethean75 wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:28 am i mean if u truly understand what that means dude... not just reading it but thinkin about the implications of that. it's crushing man.
HOW COULD just thinking about ABSOLUTELY NOTHING/NO thing being, supposedly, 'crushing'?

The 'implications' of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING is, literally, NO 'thing'.
promethean75 wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:28 am it's an existential sadness so heavy that its soul paralyzing, if only for that brief moment when genuinely thinking about it.
But 'it' is NOT a so-called 'existential sadness' NOR 'soul paralyzing' AT ALL. Well to 'me' ANYWAY. But this might just be because I KNOW what ACTUALLY HAPPENS and OCCURS. AND, 'it' is ALL VERY, VERY FAR and OPPOSITE from being 'sad' NOR 'soul paralyzing' AT ALL.
promethean75 wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:28 am and it sucks man. none of us can imagine much less ever want to 'not be there', somewhere, existing. even death row inmates prefer to live in a cell to nothingness.
If 'you' EVER become Truly INTERESTED in FINDING OUT and DISCOVERING, or LEARNING and UNDERSTANDING what thee ACTUAL Truth here IS, EXACTLY, then what 'you' IMAGINE now will be COMPLETELY SQUASHED and FINISHED with.
promethean75 wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:28 am it's all so hopelessly pointless man.
ONLY to 'you'.
promethean75 wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:28 am I'm bein sirius. i mean yeah we're all occupied and distracted right now posting or doing whatever, day after day... but it's comin dude. that day is comin and i just can't bear to think about it.
'you' can NOT 'bear' to 'think' about 'what', EXACTLY?
promethean75 wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:28 am well i guess i would if i were giving an intro into existentialism course but u guys r supposed to know all this stuff. even the mannies and nicks and AJs know it, and r just being pragmatic and making pascal's wager. they don't really believe that religious stuff.
They can NOT even AGREE ON some 'thing' here, LET ALONE ACCEPTING, and thus BELIEVING 'it' (whatever 'it' is) IS TRUE.
Age
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Re: Christianity

Post by Age »

Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:50 am
promethean75 wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:28 am please let's just not talk about it. i still can't come to terms with my mortality and the oblivion i am bound for, even after all these years. just now in reading this thread i wuz again gripped by that dreadfully cold, pointless and hopeless feeling i get when i am forced to reflect on my death and the eternal nothingness that will follow it.

i mean if u truly understand what that means dude... not just reading it but thinkin about the implications of that. it's crushing man. it's an existential sadness so heavy that its soul paralyzing, if only for that brief moment when genuinely thinking about it.

and it sucks man. none of us can imagine much less ever want to 'not be there', somewhere, existing. even death row inmates prefer to live in a cell to nothingness.

it's all so hopelessly pointless man. I'm bein sirius. i mean yeah we're all occupied and distracted right now posting or doing whatever, day after day... but it's comin dude. that day is comin and i just can't bear to think about it.
Well, that's genuine, honest fear-of-death. And it's a reality.
What is 'a reality'?

That some of 'you', adult human beings fear death? If yes, then I do NOT think ANY one would disagree with this.

Or, is 'it',

That death is something to fear? If yes, then I KNOW 'you' are Wrong.
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:50 am That's not easy to face.
What is Wrongly called 'death' is VERY EASY TO FACE, and REALLY is absolutely NOTHING AT ALL to 'fear'.
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:50 am So you have some courage, it would seem.
Are 'you' here saying that if someone FEARS some 'thing', then that by itself means that that 'one' has some 'courage'.
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:50 am
even the mannies and nicks and AJs know it, and r just being pragmatic and making pascal's wager. they don't really believe that religious stuff.
Try me.

I do believe it.
What 'religious' 'stuff', EXACTLY, do 'you' BELIEVE?

There are SO MANY DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS, as well as YOUR VERY OWN INTERPRETATIONS, and MISINTERPRETATIONS.

For example 'you' STILL BELIEVE that God is a male gendered 'thing', correct?

And this particular 'religious' 'stuff' is SO ABSURD that to NOT even ALREADY KNOW that 'it' is a COMPLETE and UTTER MISINTERPRETATION makes one wonder about the SANITY of the one with THAT BELIEF.
Age
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Re: Christianity

Post by Age »

promethean75 wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:51 am the only faith we can have is faith in a variation of an 'eternal recurrence' theory. but theories of souls possessing cumulative experiences and identities that live and die in an eternal cycle, are just superstitious nonsense.
There IS A Truth here. Getting people to STOP BELIEVING what they do, in order to be ABLE to SEE and UNDERSTAND THIS Truth.
promethean75 wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:51 am but the eternal recurrence theory is not without a caveat. no matter how many times you exist, you can only ever experience one of those lives in that eternal chain of lives at a time. so, for all existential intents and purposes, the experience of the eternal recurrence or return is synonymous to the experience of one mortal life.

see what i mean?
NO. What do you ACTUALLY MEAN?

Also, could, 'you' having MANY times existed, just be A MISGIVING?
promethean75 wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:51 am for the same reason you can't know now that you've existed countless times in the past, you wouldn't know the next time you existed after you die, i.e., some trillion years later a universe event happens again like the one we're part of now, and you end up happening in turn, etc., that you just got done existing a trillion years ago, and so on.

so, again, what solace or resolution do i get in considering it. the ER i mean.

damned if we do, damned if we don't. and I'm being generous here. the ER is not without scientific problems. but anthropomorphic theisms are, and have been since the enlightenment, undoubtedly out of the question.
BUT, there is Truth, and Falsehoods, in ALL of these things. Just LEARNING HOW to SEE 'them' ALL is just ANOTHER LEARNING process.
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Re: Christianity

Post by Age »

promethean75 wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 3:32 am when i wuz a philosophical rookie once upon a time i had a theory that there were human souls but that they stayed on the erf becuz they couldn't escape erf's gravity. the soul wuz like a disembodied assembly of the emergent properties of conscious experience but without sensory perception (as these assemblies would have no bodies or organs).
This will be ANOTHER GREAT TIME to suggest NEVER making up theories, as they could ALL be Wrong or PARTLY Wrong, which NONE of 'you' REALLY like being. So, INSTEAD of 'theorizing' WHY NOT just LOOK AT what IS IRREFUTABLY True. This Truth is HERE for ALL to LOOK AT and SEE. 'It' is ALSO EASIER and SIMPLER to SEE and UNDERSTAND than some of these IMAGINED 'theories' that 'you', human beings, come up with ANYWAY.
promethean75 wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 3:32 am this would explain ghosts perhaps, or the existence of what are mistaken as angels and demons interacting with the physical world. there's nothing religious to any of this. these are just life form constructs that evolution produced. it just happened that the erf produced, if somewhat magically, a life form of some kind of essential awareness-ness that could experience itself and the world, disembodied, after it died its physical life... and/but could never leave the erf (unless it ghosted onto a shuttle obviously).

hey stranger shit has happened.

Okay let's say the sexual impetus or Eros that underlies the dynamic of asexual and sexual reproduction in even the simplest of creatures is really a kind of animating spirit force or something. The elan vital. A symbiote of sorts that possesses the physical organisms that inhabit the erf. Say somehow during the evolution of polymeric molecules that attracted and combined to form advanced molecules that eventually could replicate, some kind of autopoietic intelligence was generated. The organizing principle of self replication would express itself most basically as the sex drive... with unique complexities depending on the species.

At the level of the human being, this Eros is expressed most vividly, is the center of the personality and the enduring feature of the particular soul in life and after death. Or something like that. Fuck I can't even remember really what the details of this crazy theory wuz. I just remember thinkin souls couldn't leave the ref and there certainly wuddint any heaven or hell or transmigration or anything like that.
Okay.
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Dontaskme
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Re: Christianity

Post by Dontaskme »

promethean75 wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:28 am please let's just not talk about it. i still can't come to terms with my mortality and the oblivion i am bound for, even after all these years. just now in reading this thread i wuz again gripped by that dreadfully cold, pointless and hopeless feeling i get when i am forced to reflect on my death and the eternal nothingness that will follow it.

i mean if u truly understand what that means dude... not just reading it but thinkin about the implications of that. it's crushing man. it's an existential sadness so heavy that its soul paralyzing, if only for that brief moment when genuinely thinking about it.

and it sucks man. none of us can imagine much less ever want to 'not be there', somewhere, existing. even death row inmates prefer to live in a cell to nothingness.

it's all so hopelessly pointless man. I'm bein sirius. i mean yeah we're all occupied and distracted right now posting or doing whatever, day after day... but it's comin dude. that day is comin and i just can't bear to think about it.

well i guess i would if i were giving an intro into existentialism course but u guys r supposed to know all this stuff. even the mannies and nicks and AJs know it, and r just being pragmatic and making pascal's wager. they don't really believe that religious stuff.
It sounds like you are not in favor of not existing and being in some kind of total oblivion forever. And you think of that state as death.

But to be fair, some people might prefer the state of never having been born at all, over the state of knowing you are born. If one prefers life over death then that preference to some other people can just be as terrifying, the thought of always being alive forever. Just as the belief in being dead forever.

The thing is though, you have NEVER known death, you will never experience death.

And also, you have no problem going to sleep each night which is like a death so to speak because you cannot make sleep happen, and you do not even make waking up happen, sleep and waking from sleep are out of your control.

Upon falling asleep at night you feel no resistance because you take it for granted that you will awaken in the morning. Even though we have no control over whether we wake from sleep or not. And so I'm guessing that's what death really means, it means being asleep until you awaken from the sleep, just to realise you can no more die than you can live...and that there's just life living itself infinitely for eternity.


What if the you that you think and believe yourself to be, is not who you are at all. Rather, what if you are an absolute nothingness of infinite space, and that this timeless and changeless place is all you will ever know and be and experience. And that death is just like a little sleep from which you awaken from and sense that absolutely no time has elasped at all between the sense of not-existing to the sense of existing which can happen only within existence itself.


.
Harry Baird
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harry Baird »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 4:15 pm I'm going to make two messages here, Harry: this one, to deal exclusively with procedure, and the second, after you decide, about the content.
I suggest that if you do have a response to the argument that I presented (and/or the question which inspired it), you present that content. To the extent that your response is to the point, we can avoid further conflict.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

Harry Baird wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:55 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 4:15 pm I'm going to make two messages here, Harry: this one, to deal exclusively with procedure, and the second, after you decide, about the content.
I suggest that if you do have a response to the argument that I presented (and/or the question which inspired it), you present that content. To the extent that your response is to the point, we can avoid further conflict.
So...you're adamant. All about the content, no reforming the manner. Your one condition is that I accept your assumptions, assumptions I do not find rational and plausible?

I find your decision regrettable. But you don't leave me much choice as to how to proceed... :? But as you wish. I shall be very to-the-point, then.
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harry Baird »

Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 3:05 pm Your one condition is that I accept your assumptions, assumptions I do not find rational and plausible?
No, you're free to challenge anything in your response, including any assumptions upon which you think the argument and/or question are based. You just need to explain what you think the assumptions are, and why they are false, with respect to any given premise(s) of the argument - that is, to explain why any given premise is false given its basis in some putative false assumption.
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 3:05 pm I shall be very to-the-point, then.
That sounds promising.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

Harry Baird wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:55 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 4:15 pm I'm going to make two messages here, Harry: this one, to deal exclusively with procedure, and the second, after you decide, about the content.
I suggest that if you do have a response to the argument that I presented (and/or the question which inspired it), you present that content. To the extent that your response is to the point, we can avoid further conflict.
Here is my response to your content.

First of all, let's get some facts that cannot be doubted.

The Old Testament, the Tanakh, says, repeatedly, that God will judge the Earth.

Is. 3:13 -- "The Lord arises to contend, And stands to judge the people." Ps. 58:11 -- "And people will say, “There certainly is a reward for the righteous; There certainly is a God who judges on the earth!” 1 Sam. 2:10 -- "The Lord will judge the ends of the earth."

Jesus Christ explicitly says the same.

Mt. 25:31-46 -- “But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. And all the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, just as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, but the goats on the left...These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

John 12:48 -- "The one who rejects Me and does not accept My teachings has one who judges him: the word which I spoke. That will judge him on the last day"

The apostles Paul, Peter and John all affirm exactly the same thing.

Paul -- Romans 2: 4-6 -- "Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and restraint and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will repay each person according to his deeds..."

Peter -- 2 Pet. 2:9 -- "...the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from a trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment..."

John -- Rev. 20: 11-15 -- "Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them; and they were judged, each one of them according to their deeds. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire."

So there is no doubting, whatever else we may think, that the Bible says that God will judge the Earth righteously, and do so though His Son, Jesus Christ. That's what it says.

But you say He cannot do that. And the reason you say He cannot is that you cannot make sense of it on the terms you, yourself, demand. What you cannot make sense of, cannot possibly happen. God cannot judge you, or the world, because Harry doesn't understand. That's your position.

And you can have it. You can stand behind that "wall" and protest. You can refuse to think yourself capable of not knowing something that God says will happen, but you cannot figure out.

But, as Peter again says, "the Day of the Lord will come." As Paul says, "the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them." And Jesus Christ says, "But I tell you that for every careless word that people speak, they will give an account of it on the day of judgment."

So be careful with your words. Be careful what you accuse God of. Make your inquiries carefully and reverently, or you will receive the summons you write for your own soul.

God says "I will judge." You say, "He will not." I say, "We will see."

And that's the end of the matter, so far as we are concerned.
Harry Baird
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harry Baird »

Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 3:32 pm Here is my response to your content.
...which blatantly begs the question.

Essentially, your response to my argument is that its (Christian) premises #1 and #2 are both true because certain scriptures (the Bible) affirm them both to be true - and those scriptures, your response goes, "cannot be doubted". The very question at issue though is whether or not those scriptures - upon which those Christian premises are based - are reliable (indubitable). Assuming them to be reliable (indubitable) in the first place in turn simply assumes your conclusion - that, despite my argument, Christianity is not contradictory.

The difficulty for you is that my argument demonstrates that that assumption is false, because, insofar as those scriptures affirm both premises #1 and #2, they affirm a contradiction, and thus they are not reliable (indubitable).
Nick_A
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Re: Christianity

Post by Nick_A »

Lacewing wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 4:50 am
Nick_A wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 12:10 am Again, as I've explained the majority have lost their sense of scale and relativity necessary to experience objective quality. People argue over belief systems without the experience of objective quality or the relation of phenomenon to its source. Why argue Christianity without distinguishing, even theoretically, its secular or transcendent origin?
For clarity, let's be specific. Do you think the majority of Christians reside in a cave'?

I don't know what you mean by "Christians"? Do you mean exoteric Christians or Christendom, or transcendent Christians at a higher level of consciousness?

Do you think you reside in a cave?

Yes. My advantage over you is in realzing my position. I have no need to attack what attacks my imagined self esteem. Most at the exoteric plane of existence speak of values and resort to nastiness doing the opposite. Hypocrisy is then justified by a group. A sign of those who have left the cave is that they don't defend hypocrisy. This is freedom. Communication is then possible.

Do you think you can discern who is and is not residing in a cave?

Why judge others? I know I am in the cave so am learning cave dynamics. I begin to understand why it is so. I've learned It is such an insulting idea to pride that it cannot be tolerated on sites dominated by secularism. It must be left alone so people can argue beliefs.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

Harry Baird wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 4:12 pm The very question at issue though is whether or not those scriptures - upon which those Christian premises are based - are reliable (indubitable). Assuming them to be reliable (indubitable) in the first place in turn simply assumes your conclusion - that, despite my argument, Christianity is not contradictory.
There's nothing "contradictory" involved, Harry. There's just two claims: God cannot judge, and God will judge.

And if we accept that the Bible does, indeed, claim that God will judge (and how can we not?), then we have two options. One is to refuse to believe it, because one is having difficulty understanding how it works...and the assumption has to be, "If I don't (yet) understand, it cannot happen."

Now, is that a reasonable assumption?

The other is to say, "I don't (yet) understand the reasons why and how it is going to happen, if it is." But whether it WILL happen or not does not, in any way, depend on my level of (present) understanding. So I should inquire carefully as to how it works, but not think that if I don't (yet) understand, it can't be true. And if I find it simply cannot be true, then I am at peace. But if I find it can be true, and is likely to be true, then I should be thankful I have been forwarned to escape judgment, and do something about that.

I have given you what the Bible says about that. Now, do you have any reason at all to actually suppose that God cannot judge the Earth? Because what Gary and others are telling me right now is that they think he really HAS to. They say that the evil in the world is simply too great, and the peril to the human race too serious for God (if there is one) not to intervene -- and if He does not, they say, He cannot be doing the right thing. He cannot be righteous. Sin must be answered, they say -- at least sin of a strong kind, such as Putin's incursions or global imperilment -- or we have reason to think that God (at least a righteous one) doesn't even exist.

One group challenges God to judge, and skeptically scoffs that He should prove His righteousness and vindicate His forbearance in not having done so yet. They take the evil in the world as proof-postive there's no God. The other insists He cannot judge, because it's not loving for Him to do so. They take any promise that God will judge as proof-positive He has no love or mercy.

Which one is right?
Harry Baird
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harry Baird »

Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 4:35 pm
At this point, I have to ask: do you understand what a logical argument is, and how one can demonstrate that a logical argument is unsound, if, indeed, it is unsound?

You're on a philosophy forum, so one might expect you to be in possession of that understanding, but you show no evidence of it.

I have presented you with a logical argument which I contend is not just sound but cogent.

You have done literally nothing to demonstrate that it is not cogent, let alone that it is not sound, which is why I ask that question. It's as though you don't even know how to. You just ignore it.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

Harry Baird wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 4:42 pm I have presented you with a logical argument
You have presented me with a set of false presuppositions, then petulantly insisted , again and again, I have to accept them and that I somehow owe you to do so -- and that normal conversation is evil and "Socratic," and such assumptions are simply not to be refused under any conditions.

You've left me no choice but to ignore your argument. It's premised on falsehoods.

Change your argument. Premise it on something we both believe is true. And I'll respond.
Harry Baird
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harry Baird »

Harry Baird wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 4:42 pm At this point, I have to ask: do you understand what a logical argument is, and how one can demonstrate that a logical argument is unsound, if, indeed, it is unsound?
It's pretty clear from your response that the answer is "No". Here's an article I just googled up and quickly read through. I think it might help you to gain the understanding that you appear to lack. (My only reservation is that it seems to apply "cogency" only to inductive arguments, whereas I have been applying "cogency" to deductive arguments such as the one we're discussing).

https://thinkbuthow.com/sound-argument/
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