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attofishpi
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Re: Christianity

Post by attofishpi »

Harry Baird wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:56 am
attofishpi wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:51 am What is your "goal" Harry?

Is it that 'brown' people are bad and 'white' people are good, or is it that 'white' people are good and 'brown' people are bad, or is it that 'white' people are bad and 'brown' people are good, or is it that 'brown' people are good and 'white' people are bad??

What is your racism regarding the colour of people's skin attempting to address precisely?
For restorative justice to be applied to the injustices committed by groups of human beings against other groups of human beings.
Oh, is that what it is?

So, next time I throw a party and there are lots of whiter skin people ('whites' in your book) and darker skin people ('blacks' in your book) and everyone is having a good time, but there is this awkward bloke called Harry running around, he keeps apologising to all the darker skin people and making EVERYONE feel uncomfortable.

Do you under_stand that everyone is going to say that you are the KUNT at the party?
Harry Baird
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harry Baird »

attofishpi wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 5:02 am
Harry Baird wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:56 am For restorative justice to be applied to the injustices committed by groups of human beings against other groups of human beings.
Oh, is that what it is?
Yes.
attofishpi wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 5:02 am So, next time I throw a party and there are lots of whiter skin people ('whites' in your book) and darker skin people ('blacks' in your book) and everyone is having a good time, but there is this awkward bloke called Harry running around, he keeps apologising to all the darker skin people and making EVERYONE feel uncomfortable.

Do you under_stand that everyone is going to say that you are the KUNT at the party?
I'm not sure who you invite to your parties, but apparently it doesn't include anybody involved in the land rights movement.
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attofishpi
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Re: Christianity

Post by attofishpi »

Harry Baird wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 5:15 am
attofishpi wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 5:02 am
Harry Baird wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:56 am For restorative justice to be applied to the injustices committed by groups of human beings against other groups of human beings.
Oh, is that what it is?
Yes.
attofishpi wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 5:02 am So, next time I throw a party and there are lots of whiter skin people ('whites' in your book) and darker skin people ('blacks' in your book) and everyone is having a good time, but there is this awkward bloke called Harry running around, he keeps apologising to all the darker skin people and making EVERYONE feel uncomfortable.

Do you under_stand that everyone is going to say that you are the KUNT at the party?
I'm not sure who you invite to your parties, but apparently it doesn't include anybody involved in the land rights movement.
That's right Harry.

We don't have boring and divisive political "parties". We are ALL born now with wot we got, so make the best of it and enjoy it (including each other's company, no matter the hue of their skin - you racist twerp)

..but hey, I can talk to some of my Aboriginal relatives, if you actually OWN some of THEIR land - they will probably take it (you sucker)
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harry Baird »

attofishpi wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 5:20 am
Harry Baird wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 5:15 am I'm not sure who you invite to your parties, but apparently it doesn't include anybody involved in the land rights movement.
That's right Harry.
Yeah, it's pretty obvious. You couldn't care less about the fight of indigenous Australians for restorative justice, especially with respect to their lands. Aboriginal tent embassy? Who knows? Who cares? Certainly, attofishpi doesn't, and you're not welcome at his parties if you do.
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attofishpi
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Re: Christianity

Post by attofishpi »

Harry Baird wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 5:33 am
attofishpi wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 5:20 am
Harry Baird wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 5:15 am I'm not sure who you invite to your parties, but apparently it doesn't include anybody involved in the land rights movement.
That's right Harry.
Yeah, it's pretty obvious. You couldn't care less about the fight of indigenous Australians for restorative justice, especially with respect to their lands. Aboriginal tent embassy? Who knows? Who cares? Certainly, attofishpi doesn't, and you're not welcome at his parties if you do.
Harry!

You are starting to give me the impression that you don't think you are an idiot. That you indeed have lunatic level ideas in wanting to give all your stuff to descendents of original inhabitants.

Like I said, my Aboriginal relatives will probably take ALL your stuff. You can PM me, honestly I will help you move out.

With your level of racism, are you going to require some sort of skin "depth of colour" analysis or perhaps a DNA test will do? (they are likely to have some of that nasty English in them)
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harry Baird »

Atto, I say this with no malice, because I know that there are plenty of people who think like you do, and, thus, that immersion in this culture of thought is difficult to extricate oneself from, but you seem to be largely ignorant that the lands rights movement including the Aboriginal Tent Embassy is very reflective of the general indigenous will. I have linked you in to a couple of web pages that describe that movement. There are plenty more. Instead of thoughtfully considering this content, you accuse me of racism. That's on you, dude. It's got nothing to do with me.
Gary Childress
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Re: Christianity

Post by Gary Childress »

Harry Baird wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:38 am
Gary Childress wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 3:46 pm Find the monster to destroy.
I don't see how denial of monstrosity makes better sense.
That's probably what the short white girl in the photo is thinking according to the world she grew up in. People will always heckle and ridicule each other for perceived differences or wrong doing or whatnot. I'm not saying the short white girl (assuming her mouth is open from slinging insults at her boogeyman) is right. (And I'm sure there's more to that picture than just that-- if you notice most of the other young people in the picture, they seem relatively more reserved) I just don't see a reason to be outraged anymore. That picture is from before I was born. From what I see around me, we've since moved further as a society. I mean people still heckle each other over things but digging up old pictures to rekindle old wounds doesn't seem all that worthwhile to me in terms of helping us all get along.

I am also not saying you or Seeds are "racist" as you seem to attribute to my beliefs.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Harry Baird wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:37 amI think I understand what you mean by "imposition" here, but it seems to me to be a misleading notion in this context. Why? Because any choice that we make -- whether ethical or unethical -- in a sense "imposes" upon the (rest of the) world. By our will -- the exercising of which we cannot avoid -- we unavoidably change the world in one way or another, and thus "impose" upon it. Choices guided by ethics are no more "imposing" than unethical ones; in fact, they are less imposing, because they seek to minimise harm - the worst type of imposition.
I merely wanted to bring out, to bring to the surface, the issue of *imposition*. And I cannot disagree with you: all decisions made by human beings have the potential to be *impositions*. I say 'have the potential' because I recognize naturalistic choices as potentially non-conscious, non-reasoned; perhaps instinctual is the right word.

In respect to your general position I have made the observation that I see your ethical value-system as a very real *imposition* that chooses to act against the way things are in our world, and that *world* could be described as amphibious: on one hand rooted in naturalism, rising up out of naturalism, while simultaneously accessing or employing another element: that of conscious decision, the apprehension and application of principle, et cetera.
You seem to be alluding to a very strange sort of logic here: that other species sometimes behave in nature in certain ways, therefore we as human groups should behave (or at least are justified in behaving) in the same way as those species towards other human groups.
What I am saying is that *we* arise within a naturalistic context and, as it pertains to a specific instance -- in this case the founding and the construction of South Africa, which can become an 'emblem' for a great number of similar situations, from *time immemorial* up to and including our present -- which I personally take as a sort of *model*, that in one way or another these are inevitable processes that pertain to 'the world of becoming'. The world of mutability and mutation. The world of growth and decline. The world of 'planting' and also 'construction'.
The first is that if we were to design a world which was to be as naturally good as possible -- in a moral sense -- it would probably look quite different to this one.

The second is that given that this world appears to be designed, we can infer from it something about how the designer(s) want it to "work" (whatever their motivations otherwise are).
There is a tremendous debate about the value-systems and the value-concepts that comprise a 'moral position'. In fact our world, the world of our present, is in substantial upheaval due to value-battles, conflicts between perspectives and value-orientations. I find that I am uncertain if I can go along with your moral imperatives though I believe that I am able to understand them.

The issue of 'designing a world' though does attract my attention. And that is what I am talking about essentially in my reference to South Africa and what had been created. I've told you that I *support* it. I've told you that I 'cast my lot with it' in the sense that I cast my lot with my ancestors who have constructed the world in which I live and who have also provided me with me, if I can put it this way. So I have to make choices. And I have to assume responsibility for those choices. Now as it happened, settlers came from Europe to the Americas and, through naturalistic imposition (an advanced civilization encountering a stone-age culture) and through imposition on many different other levels, the way of life of those stone age peoples literally came to an end. There is, effectively, no way that a hunter-gatherer culture could have survived what amounted to an onslaught of an entirety that was the encounter I refer to.

So here we come to another point that we have in other places touched on (and which aroused intense reaction on your part). That 'conquest', what resulted from that encounter, whether you or I like it or not, is still going on. Not long ago I referred to Mario Vargas Llosa (Peruvian writer and intellectual) who has stated that in his view the best course for Peruvian indigenous culture is assimilation. Along the same lines I propose that a same process (and imperative) applies to those of African descent in the United States (and elsewhere in the Americas). The issue with Black America hinges on 'assimilation'. The entire cultural and social and political process in the United States has been, centrally, about assimilation. There is no way to turn back from it. You will not ever be able to *return* to some former time or status. If you do think that you are engaged in a strange and seductive form of romanticism. Similarly, I proposed to you that Aboriginal culture must 'assimilate' to the degree that this is possible. These are 'inevitable' processes. They were set in motion, they continue in motion (in one way or another) and they cannot, effectively, be reversed.

So it is really in this primary sense that I refer to what is *primitive*. A tribal people, living off the land (more or less), without a written language and without a sophisticated material culture and technology will, simply by proximity, be subsumed into the dominant and dominating culture. What power or process *oversees* this? I am uncertain how to define it. It seems to be at least in part grounded in naturalism. So for example if it happened that an alien culture landed on our planet *by accident* and not through specific choice and they were immensely more advanced than we are, that there influence would be impossible to avoid or to resist. Effectively, it would modify everything about our own *world*. What force or power oversees this? You could perhaps see it as 'providential' (as opposed to merely naturalistic and accidental) but that implies a 'plan' and a 'planner'.

What then modernizes? What processes oversee all that we witness in the world? You can focus, literally, on any event, any conquest, any encounter, any invasion, any occupation, any colonial project be it a modern one or an ancient one, and you will be thoroughly powerless to *impose* your highfaluting idealisms, as a type of moral retrofit, onto the way things actually are in this world of becoming.
I don't otherwise follow your logic.
Well, of course you don't! How could you? You'd have to bend or modify your worldview in order to entertain some of the ideas, or realities, that I am presenting. And for this reason I refer to your *system* as one that can best be grasped if it is described as an *imposition*. I may go along with you with some of this, but then I may also choose not to. I also have determining power.
Here's how I see it: to a meaningful extent, within the realm under discussion (human society and civilisation), we get to decide "the way things really are". We are under no compulsion nor obligation to simply mimic the natural world, nor simply to do what power allows. In fact, if we are civilised, we will decidedly not follow the power principle of "might makes right", because that's one of the least civilised principles; it's the principle of the brutish dictator.
It would not be my primary point to disagree with you essentially. But remember that this discussion began, at least for my part, with wondering how it is that 'righteous projects' that have taken place in our Modernity seem to lead not to positive and productive results (sound accomplishments, the maintenance of structure and solidity) but rather to disruption, chaos, breakdown, civil strife, ungrounding, and a whole range of other problems.

The problem -- perhaps it is your core problem? -- is that by referring to the breakdowns we observe, or I observe, in South Africa we must take into consideration the people who took over the system and, as it is happening, run it into the ground. You are quite aware that I am referring to Black Africa itself. And you are also aware of the perception that *they cannot run a country* and they cannot *manage civilization*. And so we must then note that they never wanted it in the first place, did they? It was *imposed* on them by Europeans and European culture. The issue then is what inner structure, within them, determines what they construct or do not construct, right? We know that the dreaded White Man is entirely capable of constructing civilized worlds. This is what he does. He did exactly this in your country Australia. As he did in all the English colonies. That is his will in operation. And, simultaneously, it happens that his will has acted and is still acting in this our world.

That's all really. That is all I wish to bring out to be seen. Curiously, and no matter where I go -- I refer to myself as an individual and as a member of a culture -- I am aware that my effect will always take shape according to these designs. It is part of my *internal structure*. And yes I am aware that my presence is an *imposition* in this sense.

So the way I lok at things, again speaking about South Africa, is that those early settlers certainly did impose themselves on the land and the *primitive tribes* who lived there. That is the San and the Bushmen cultures, descendants of Late Stone Age peoples, then Bantu and other peoples such as the Khoekhoe. No part of this can be negated, neither in South Africa or, in similar manner, all over the world.

What interests me is the 'turn against oneself'. The review of history, the revisioning of it, the vilification of historical processes, and the development of a kind of reverse-trajectory. I am aware of this *attitude* or this *inclination* because I have been subject to it. It is quite literally a part of my upbringing. These were ideas and ideals that were presented to me as 'necessary' and also as 'moral'. Precisely as you present your moral views to me or at least largely so.

So what I have done over a number of posts is to refer no so much to you as to a *general person* who holds to these views and ideals. I have critiqued it and them and revealed what I think is another perspective that is possible to have and which can be 'justified'. But that justification requires a confrontation with the value-system that you seem, generally, to hold to. And so when I refer to being involved with other idea-sets and refer to people who are working intellectually in these areas, at the very least you may understand why. Nothing is absolutely settled for me. In the final analysis I cannot say with clear certainty what *view* to cultivate and hold to. The entire conversation however is very interesting to me.

One final note. When I said "I am nothing if not self-interested" it has a double-meaning. You take self-interest as a negative. But I transvalue it into a positive. If I cannot have self-interest I cannot, literally, build and achieve in the realm of becoming. I would be nothing if I did not have self-interest to accrue to me all that I do have, all that I am, and all that I choose to remain being.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

AJ said
: What I notice in your quoted paragraph is that you are tempting me, trying to provoke me to make the sort of statement you in fact want to hear.
Harry Baird wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:37 amI'm just looking for the brave honesty of which I know you're capable, my friend. You're anonymous on this forum. There's no reason to hide your true thoughts, diabolical and wabbity as they might be. Nibble on your carrot and then make your statement.
Personally, I do not fully buy that. I have spent a good deal of time on public forums and I have observed and noted techniques that involve *setting moral traps* and trying to get people to implicate themselves in ways that are shunned, vilified, reviled, and suppressed by a majority of opinion. The entire issue revolves around the *politically correct* and also involves the issue of intellectual (and moral) coercion; the control of thought and the coercion of opinion.

The fact of the matter is (and everyone here is aware of this) it is possible, within the public sphere, to say something, to express a thought, that calls forth a tremendous reaction that can result, and has in so many instances resulted in cancellation. De-platforming; de-banking. The loss of livelihood. In Europe the expression of certain ideas and opinions can land one in jail or fined.

Please, be real.

So though I am not saying that any of this applies here I think we need to be aware that we are surrounded by dangerous currents and also in conventional movements that are deeply committed to suppressing free thought. That is a basic fact as far as I am concerned.

What seems to be happening -- and here I refer to Twitter and other public venues -- is that a counter-movement is gaining power in opposing censorship, in defense of the principles of 'free speech', and is turning against the thought-control that has become not just common but nearly universal.

Therefore I begin with certain presuppositions: It is, in our present, not possible to 'think freely' and express oneself freely. And there are a wide range of topics that simply cannot be freely discussed. In any case, and I assume you are aware, there is great conflict around these issues.

In any case I do not have any particularly radical or let's say *hateful* positions or views (as you imply). I really only try to pry open the parameters of potential conversation through resisting politically correct thought and speech control mechanisms just to expose the controversial issues to the light of day, to de-block them as legitimate topics.

One thing that is going on, though I doubt that you pay much attention to the American sphere, is a battle over what can be said and what cannot be said. At bottom it is presented as a 'moral' issue and wrongthink is condemned morally, and fiercely.

It is obvious that I do not *hide my true thoughts*, in fact I take a great many risks. But I also want to be very very careful in what I say especially when I am not decided in many different areas. I am not an activist trying to influence people to take on my views. I am far more interested in presenting or exposing the wide range of possible views.
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iambiguous
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Re: Christianity

Post by iambiguous »

Harry Baird wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:39 am
iambiguous wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 8:10 pm The existence of God, in my view, is the key to it all in regard to human morality.
Though I disagree, I have no interest in arguing on this forum over moral grounding any more than I already have.
What you have no interest in, in my view, is grounding your own moral objectivism in a discussion that revolves around a particular "conflicting good" given a particular context.

Given, in turn, the extent to which we construe Christianity as relevant here.
iambiguous wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 8:10 pm If an omniscient/omnipotent Christian God does exist than we have Kant's "transcending font".
Harry Baird wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:39 amI'm not sure what you're referring to by 'Kant's "transcending font"'. Can you help to inform me here? I haven't read Kant in the original, although I understand him to be seminal in Western philosophy.
From a post of mine over at ILP:
iambiguous wrote:I have always been both intrigued with and puzzled by Kant's moral philosophy. How reasonable is it? How does God figure into it? How, if Kant's metaethical approach to laying a rational foundation for the construction of a Kingdom of Ends is applied to an actual moral conflict, does it fare? For example, can it be used such that each individual embraces a "prudential" judgment regarding the ethical parameters of aborting a human fetus? Suppose you have two highly intelligent Kantians using the methodology Kant suggests and coming to completely opposite moral conclusions about abortion? How is this any different from two highly intelligent advocates of existentialism doing the same thing? In other words, suppose on issue after issue after issue the overwhelming prepondernce of those who embrace Kant's deontological moral philosophy all derived the very same ethical convictions. Kantians may claim that misses the point, of course, but if, in fact, almost all Kantians did derive the same ethcial conviction on almost all moral conflicts that would be a startling thing. And I'm sure Kantians would be the first to point it out. But they don't do they? Instead, they are all over the moral map just like the rest of us.

This would seem to indicate all the more it is simply not possible to deduce an essential or universal moral perspective regarding the aborting of a human fetus----whether the circumstances ranged from a one week old embryo conceived as a result of a busted condom...to a 5 month olf fetus conceived as a result of a father raping his own daughter...to a fetus literally hours away from being born.

This is a crucial point for me. Whether you spend hour after agonizing hour in deep introspective reflection or merely flip a coin there is no way to differentiate the decison to obtain an actual abortion in an actual circumstantial context as a moral or an immoral choice. In the end you just say, "this is how it appears to me...this seems reasonable to me." But of course others who come to very different conclusions then yours are saying the very same thing about their own conflicting vantage point. And this in effect is situational ethics. You try to embrace each moral context as intelligently as you are able, sure; but you are forced to acknowledge the inherent limitations we all face in pursuing this daunting task. No one, in other words, can know for certain if a fetus is a human being---not in the sense that, say, the Constitution affords certain inalienable rights to individuals. Nor can men know what it is like to endure the experience of being forced to give birth against their wishes. So, how would anyone be able to "transcend" the clearly existential nature of such factors [but two of many others] so as to come forward with a moral conviction they feel should be embraced as a universal law?

Kant, of course, got around this antinomy by depositing his "universal" moral philosophy into a transcendental contraption---God. Perhaps not the conventional rendition of God, but God none the less.

Here, for example, is how Christine M. Korsgaard encompassed this in, Creating the Kingdom of Ends:

The threat posed by the impossibility of achieving the Highest Good is best understood by considering the way the moral motive functions. You view yourself as a member of the intelligble world and so as a possible legislator of the Kingdom of Ends. You are among the world's first causes. But there are other first causes: other persons, and whatever else is responsible for the way things appear to us and so of the material content of the laws of nature. In the phenomonal world the results of our actions are determined not just by our intentions, but by the forces of nature and the actions of other persons. Our attempts to realize the good are often diverted by these other forces. It is this that gives rise to the antinomy. Kant's description of the problem in Critique of Judgment is better:

'He [a righteous man] desires no advantage to himself from following the moral law, either in this or in another world; he wishes, rather, disinterestedly to establish the good to which the holy law directs all of his powers. But his effort is bounded; and from nature...he can never expect a regular harmony...with the purpose which yet he feels himself obligated and impelled to accomplish. Deceit, violence and envy will always surround him, although he himself is honest, peaceable and kindly; and the righteous men with whom he meets will, notwithstanding their worthiness of happiness, be yet subjected by nature which regards not this, to all the evils of want, disease and ultimately death, just like the beast of the earth...The purpose then which this well-intentioned person has and ought to have before him in his pusuit of moral laws, he must certainly give up as impossible'



So, here we are, mere mortals cast out of the Garden...out of Paradise and forced to make our way through the days groping as best we can to understand what it means to "do good" and, in turn, incessantly bumping into all of these "phenomonological" obstacles that impede our progress. How are we to know Right from Wrong and, once having taken our leap, how are we to intertwine our choices with others in a "natural world" that brings us one calamity [man-made and otherwise] after the next? And why should we "do good" anyway when all paths lead to oblivion? It certainly does seem, as Kant suggests, it would be best to give up the task "as impossible", right?

Watch, then, how Kant resolves this:

Korsgaard:

The solution to this and every antinomy is to appeal to the noumenal/phenomoenal distinction. In the world of the sense, there is no causual connection between a virtuous disposition and happiness, but there could be a connection between one's noumenal disposition and one's happiness in the world of sense. But this connection would be indirect: it would be mediated by an Author of Nature who had designed the laws of nature so that the connection holds [C2 114-15]. In order to play the role envisaged, this Author would have to be omnipotent [to design the laws of nature], omniscient [to look into the hearts ofrational beings and know their moral dispositions] and perfectly good.

But Kant has, as noted, already deconstructed this metaphysical font so we can't fall back on the guy with the big white beard. Instead, we need a neo-metaphysical construct to take his place.

More Korsgaard:

The Author of Nature would have the attributes traditionally ascribed to God. If there were a God, then, the Highest Good would be possible, and morality would not direct us to impossible ends. Since we must obey the moral law, and therefore must adopt the Highest Good as our end, we need to believe that end is possible. So we need to believe in what will make it possible. This is not a contingent need, based on an arbitray desire, but 'a need of pure reason'. this provides a pure practical reason for belief in God. [C2 142-43]

But what is this really? Isn't it whatever Kant's "rational mind" deduces it to be. It is, for all intents and purposes, merely human psychology at its most self-deceptive. We want to live in a world that is Good; and we want always to be able to Do Good in it. Yet we know that, out in the phenomonal world, this is often very, very, difficult to actualize. Not only because the incessantly slippery and sliding circumstantial contexts are bursting at the seams with complex and convoluted contingencies, ambiguites and, uncertainies...but also because we need some sort of "extra-phenomonological" incentive to Do Good when, in so doing, we get dumped on by reality over and over and over again.

More from Korsgaard:

A faith in God and in immortality of the soul thus based on practical reason---our practical faith---is not just wishful thinking, because it springs from a rational demand. As Kant strikingly puts it:

'Granted that the pure moral law inexorably binds every man as a command [not as a rule of prudence], the righteous man may say: I will that there be a God, that my existence in this world be also an existence in a pure world of the understanding, and finally that my duratiom be endless [C2 143]'


But isn't this really just Christianty in another guise? It matters not how cleverly the Kantians manipulate the abstract words in the abstract metaethical concepts, it's the same thing. Therefore, in my view, they are only deluding themselves when they suggest this a priori mental construction is establishing something really different.

Finally from Korsgaard:

Our beliefs in God, immortality and freedom...are 'postulates of practical reason'. A postulate of practical reason is theorethical in form, asserting something about what is the case, yet it cannot be shown theoretically to be either true or false. But we have an interest springing from the needs of morality in believing it. Since practical reason supports belief in the postulates, its power is more extensive than that of theoretical reason. In establishing the postulates, practical reason takes up the metaphysical tasks that theoretical reason had to abandon. For if there is a God, who made the world in order to achieve the Highest Good, then the world does have an unconditionally good purpose. A teleological account of the sort that the metaphysian seeks---one according to which everything is made for the best in the Best of All Possible Worlds---would be true.

This is less philosophical speculation, in my view, than a human all too human psychological reaction to imagining a world without God. If God does not exist, in other words, we have to invent Him. A priori, as it were.
iambiguous wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 8:10 pm Come on, my point is that in regard to a particular set of circumstances pertaining to an issue widely viewed as revolving around conflicting moral convictions [like abortion], we compare and contrast our respective moral philosophies. Bring your own "succinct definitional statement" to bear on what William Barrett encompassed as "rival goods" here:

"For the choice in...human [moral conflicts] is almost never between a good and an evil, where both are plainly marked as such and the choice therefore made in all the certitude of reason; rather it is between rival goods, where one is bound to do some evil either way, and where the the ultimate outcome and even---or most of all---our own motives are unclear to us."
Harry Baird wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:39 amOh. I guess I could try to translate that into a definition of "dasein", but you failed my last - good-faith - attempt based on posts to which you'd linked me, and it probably wouldn't be fruitful to try again. I'm still not quite sure what you mean by the word, and you seem unwilling to explain yourself. OK. In that case, I'll simply let the matter drop.
Note to others:

You decide which of us is being more evasive. And which of us is intent on fleshing out the meaning of dasein more substantively. By, for example, intertwining it in the lives that we actually live. Lives that often come to clash over conflicting value judgments.
tillingborn
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Re: Christianity

Post by tillingborn »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Dec 01, 2022 6:19 pm
tillingborn wrote: Thu Dec 01, 2022 12:04 pmI have never ignored that you deny having a "Pravda", I just don't think it's true.
You're free to think as you think, of course. Everybody has a right to be wrong.
Your problem is that the Bible is your "Pravda". That you feel the need to interpret all of it in a way that is sympathetic to your own beliefs, or at least what you think your beliefs should be, plays havoc with your critical faculties. The media you rely on know this and feed you nonsense that makes you angry or frightened; because that is what holds your attention and makes them money.
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Dec 01, 2022 6:19 pmBut the legacy media contradicts itself.
Which is what you do here:
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Dec 01, 2022 12:24 am...at first, I misunderstood your implication...
It took a ridiculous amount of time for you to admit a trivial mistake. To make matters worse, you put a great deal of creative effort into trying to show that I misread what you had written. Even though you failed, in a display of spectacular dishonesty or self-deception, you carried on as though I had misunderstood you:
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Dec 01, 2022 12:24 am...and you misunderstood mine. So I withdraw my seeming approval of that comment. See if you can do the same.
I don't need to do the same, as you haven't demonstrated that I have misunderstood you.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

tillingborn wrote: Tue Dec 06, 2022 1:51 pm I have never ignored that you deny having a "Pravda", I just don't think it's true.
Well though I protested, you went on as if I had never said it at all, and didn't even address it. However, it matters not a whit. It's your prerogative.

You can criticize me, criticize my authorities, and anything else you like. But it does not explain at all why the legacy news media have so blatantly reversed themselves.

That's not a matter that has anything at all to do with me. They screwed that up all on their own. And it's to themselves that they are exposed as unfaithful.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

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iambiguous wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 9:15 pm This is a crucial point for me. Whether you spend hour after agonizing hour in deep introspective reflection or merely flip a coin there is no way to differentiate the decison to obtain an actual abortion in an actual circumstantial context as a moral or an immoral choice. In the end you just say, "this is how it appears to me...this seems reasonable to me." But of course others who come to very different conclusions than yours are saying the very same thing about their own conflicting vantage point. And this in effect is situational ethics. You try to embrace each moral context as intelligently as you are able, sure; but you are forced to acknowledge the inherent limitations we all face in pursuing this daunting task. No one, in other words, can know for certain if a fetus is a human being---not in the sense that, say, the Constitution affords certain inalienable rights to individuals. Nor can men know what it is like to endure the experience of being forced to give birth against their wishes. So, how would anyone be able to "transcend" the clearly existential nature of such factors [but two of many others] so as to come forward with a moral conviction they feel should be embraced as a universal law?
It seems that with a bit of intelligent organization we might be able to succeed in seeing things here *go forward*. Note that, as is typical of Harry, his energy flags. Understandable. But let's try to examine things and, at least, put them in some sensible order.

First, Iambiguous reveals his own position. I will try to paraphrase it. He is an *outcome* of the metaphysical crisis when the capability of *believing in* a dominant moral imperative, put into motion by 'god' himself, collapsed. That is to say that *the horizon was erased*. No god, no established moral rules, man 'cast back' into the world of nature and natural processes, man who had his metaphysical ground ripped out from underneath him. And man -- as with so many who write here -- stuck in a ...
whirlpool: rotary oceanic current, a large-scale eddy that is produced by the interaction of rising and falling tides. Similar currents that exhibit a central downdraft are termed vortexes and occur where coastal and bottom configurations provide narrow passages of considerable depth.
What Iambiguous is revealing is, neither more nor less, exactly where he is situated when, as it happened, the reigning moral imperative imploded. And he goes on to assert that *this is in fact the true human situation and condition*. In other words he can find no alternative. So his effort is to *reveal and explain how things really are*. Thus the axial declaration that any 'moral position' and all ethics depend on dasein: a not-at-all-easy-to-grasp-set-of-complex-predicates-about-human-being-and-existence. It is not surprising that, in the course of Iambiguous' expositions the term is tossed in but never talked about except as a vague reference.

Is there a way to reduce the term to some sort of simple, declarative definition? Iambiguous' use of it seems to roughly translate to "situational ethics that depend on the person, the moment, and the general situation, where each person, moment and situation is different and demands different decisions".

Curiously, he then plunges into a moral and ethical conflict fought over in our own day. He is unable to solve the issue. He sees *both sides* which nullify each other (according to his presentation). If there is no god there is no soul. If there is no soul then there cannot be conceived any special stance of protection offered by those born and alive to that soul involved in being a fetus which will, successively, develop into a full-fledged human being and take a place among the community of the living. Thus that embryo cannot be understood to have any particular or innate value or *right*.

Iambiguous, then, seems to express and explain what I think is fair to describe as the *first step* after having been expelled, as it were, from a functioning and determining metanarrative that was understood to be *real* and *operational*. So he refers often to a *no god world* which, largely, describes the existential situation of many many people.

Oddly, we have all seen how this drama plays out. Immanuel Can, now peculiarly silent, presents us with the valid reasons we all seem to have for rejecting his set of religious categories. He shoves it right in our faces. He makes it *impossible* to accept his fanatical views, and he helps to explain why they have been rejected. But then what? He actually poses a set of questions that *must* be answered but which are not answered. If not that, then what?? The innate question must be answered (but cannot be answered).

Gary has no answer, and he is *stuck* in his way within a whirlpool of doubt and negation.

LaceWing proposes, in her various ways, what I think Nietzsche often alluded to as a *possibility* for those who found themselves in freedom, perhaps for the first time, after the collapse of a reigning metaphysical system: simply the possibility to dance with a certain freedom and abandon to *new tunes* and melodies. In a sense the entire issue of metaphysics is put to the side. No *philosophical replacement* is needed nor asked for.

Nick simply abandoned what he felt is a useless and wasted conversation. He throws up his hands in frustration because people just do not get what he gets.

Dubious is an unusual case if the metaphor of the *whirlpool* (a configuration that traps, that cannot be resolved, and which has the capability of *taking one under*) is taken seriously. I admit to not being able to make sense of his position. It seems to me to be the abandonment of any (former) metaphysics and a resolution to see only in terms of naturalistic phenomena. Indeed to *elevate* these without, in my view, realizing the ramifications of a no-metaphysics world.

Harbal, Tillingborn and numerous others (I refuse not to capitalize proper names!) don't really have any position at all. They do not seem to have *thought through* any of the ramifications of the larger situation we are in and they hardly seem to care! They seem therefore to be locked into a position of opposing and obstructing those who do, still, make metaphysical declarations with 'moralizing tones'. But this is something like reflex, perhaps even sport. They seem to have nothing better to do and are *bored*.

"Are you ready for some dessert?" 😂

Henry has a peculiar and adamant position also in a *no-god world* but with one solid declarative stance: I am, and everyone is, inviolate. It is defended only by emotional adamancy and by the intensity of the declaration. No proof exists or can exist since, it seems, god has absented himself from everything. Yet he defends the god-believers which seems a bit peculiar.

Harry? What am I to say about you? You exist in, as I know, a Manichaean conundrum. You say that god is impotent in our world and, effectively, that this world is ruled by powers & principalities that carry on without regard to 'justice' or really anything but their own 'self-serving desire'. However, you are lit-up with a burning sense of opposition to that reigning injustice. You make an effort to argue, therefore, from a personalized position within a 'no-god world' but, of course, this is really hopeless since you know, at the deepest level, there is no hope at all.

Thus I note again a position of capture within the whirlpool of a sort of impotence.

Socrates to Adeimantus in The Republic:
Imagine then a fleet or a ship in which there is a captain who is taller and stronger than any of the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and his knowledge of navigation is not much better. The sailors are quarreling with one another about the steering — every one is of opinion that he has a right to steer, though he has never learned the art of navigation and cannot tell who taught him or when he learned, and will further assert that it cannot be taught, and they are ready to cut in pieces any one who says the contrary.

They throng about the captain, begging and praying him to commit the helm to them; and if at any time they do not prevail, but others are preferred to them, they kill the others or throw them overboard, and having first chained up the noble captain’s senses with drink or some narcotic drug, they mutiny and take possession of the ship and make free with the stores; thus, eating and drinking, they proceed on their voyage in such a manner as might be expected of them. Him who is their partisan and cleverly aids them in their plot for getting the ship out of the captain’s hands into their own whether by force or persuasion, they compliment with the name of sailor, pilot, able seaman, and abuse the other sort of man, whom they call a good-for-nothing; but that the true pilot must pay attention to the year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, and whatever else belongs to his art, if he intends to be really qualified for the command of a ship, and that he must and will be the steerer, whether other people like or not-the possibility of this union of authority with the steerer’s art has never seriously entered into their thoughts or been made part of their calling.

Now in vessels which are in a state of mutiny and by sailors who are mutineers, how will the true pilot be regarded? Will he not be called by them a prater, a star-gazer, a good-for-nothing?
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Lacewing
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Re: Christianity

Post by Lacewing »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Dec 06, 2022 2:46 pm the legacy news media have so blatantly reversed themselves.
'Legacy news media' in comparison to what great representation of truth?

Why do Christians always need an evil foe?

The most compelling thing about such one-sided narratives is the revelation of what they are serving.

When people are really interested in truth, they want to see from more than one angle.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

Lacewing wrote: Tue Dec 06, 2022 7:17 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Dec 06, 2022 2:46 pm the legacy news media have so blatantly reversed themselves.
'Legacy news media' in comparison to what great representation of truth?
Their own.
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