Christianity

[Age]

"The one who believes in the Son has eternal life; but the one who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” (John 3:36)
It's that plain.

No it's not.

You'll find it is.

Like it or not, that's how God promises it's going to be.

LOL
LOL
LOL

ONCE AGAIN, an UNENDING BELIEF that the "male" God makes "promises" to "immanuel can" DIRECTLY and ONLY "immanuel can" KNOWS what those "promises" are EXACTLY. However, "immanuel can" NEVER explain, in detail, HOW those "promises" could ACTUALLY come to fruition.

Here is a GREAT EXAMPLE of just how the "devil", itself, is ACTUALLY FOOLING the 'one' who MAKES the ABSURD and RIDICULOUS CLAIMS here.

When, and IF, 'you' EVER learn HOW the Mind and the brain work, EXACTLY, then ALL of this becomes PERFECTLY CRYSTAL CLEAR.

[Age]

And I gather that you recognize that if I am *up to something*

I didn't mean to suggest you were up to anything sinister.

Because "alexis jacobi" is very suspicious and "sees" EVER one is "up to something" he also "sees" EVERY one LOOKS AT "alexis jacobi" as though 'it' is "up to something" also.

Plus, "alexis jacobi" is ACTUALLY "up to something" as 'it' is 'trying to' DECEIVE here that 'it' knows more than it actually does.

I would guess you just have a particular theory you find winsome, and you're looking to shore it up with the available evidence.

Nothing wrong with that.

There is if the so-called "evidence" does NOT even POINT TO the "particular theory", And, anyway "theories" as I have SHOWN are just a complete WASTE of time ANYWAY. And, one of the reasons for this is that they are ONLY based on ASSUMPTIONS and/or GUESSES, and that 'evidence' can ALWAYS be NOT for what is being proposed in the 'theory'.

PROOF and Facts are REALLY thee ONLY 'things' worthy of LOOKING AT, SEEING, and DISCUSSING.

it is clarifying what I understand and believe.

That's an even better goal. No problems, then.

This here is just how GULLIBLE, STUPID, and ABSURD people REALLY WERE, back in those days.

Directive Robert Frost

Thanks for that. I'm fond of poetry.

And this is MEANT to be a 'philosophy' forum. LOL

[Age]

I didn't mean to suggest you were up to anything sinister.

I have my own lexicon I guess. To be up to something and what we are “up to” only refers to our primary focus, conscious or sometimes semi- or unconscious.

So, what are 'you', "alexis jacobi" REALLY 'up to'?

Or, are you going to KEEP this a SECRET also, and just KEEP talking about 'it' and ALLUDING to what you COULD BE 'up to'?

[Age]

"But even Freud had this serious problem: that the strategy of psychologizing faith works just as well for Atheism. One could argue that just as belief in God could be a desire for a father figure, or a way of escaping stress, or whatever, one could argue that the cause of Atheism is a childish desire NOT to answer to a father, or a way of escaping the stress of moral duty."

Hold your horses, Manny. The default state of a person is atheism; children are taught about god and religion. Then, once this seed of paranoia - that big brother is watching you from on high - is planted in your head, any number of psychological traumas can result. An obvious and more common one being, anger at god, who allows so much suffering and misfortune in one's life.

Just about EVERY cause of so-called "so much suffering and misfortune in one's life" comes from adult human beings ALONE.

Exactly like how 'the world' (or way of life) was created by human beings ALONE.

One then rebels against this father figure and everything follows from that.

ONLY IF one BELIEVES there is some sort of father figure like this. And, AGAIN, this BELIEF ONLY EXIST because of what adult human beings ALONE have created.

You can call this atheism for the wrong reasons, which amounts to irrational/delusional behavior. Here, it was the religious indoctrination that made sick and brought about all the consequent behavior.

Although the 'argument from evil' is pretty fuckin solid,

LOL That so-called "argument" is NOT sound AND valid, and therefore it is as WEAK and FRAGILE as EVERY other "argument", AGAIN made up by adult human beings ALONE, ARE.

WATCHING 'you', adult human beings, for millennia now 'trying to' "argue" your OWN POSITIONS that you EACH HOLD ONTO STRONGLY and DEARLY has been Truly HUMOROUS to OBSERVE and bear WITNESS to.

it's not the reason here for this particular behavior. This person is not thinking in terms of abstract arguments against the existence of god, but rather a personal vendetta against god, at this point.

So no, you can't reverse-psychologize Freud's premise here. The 'cause' of atheism, or this particular mood of atheism, IS religion in this case. The idea of the father against which one would later rebel, was put there by religion.

But some just BELIEVE God does NOT exist because NO ACTUAL PROOF has ever been put forward, and NOT because of ANY 'rebellion' AT ALL.

[Age]

No it's not.

You'll find it is.

Like it or not, that's how God promises it's going to be.

The most pathetic gods ever invented are of the OT and the NT. To believe as literal anything so diminutive as this idiotic father & son story requires a brain scan to discover what went wrong!

But it is ONLY the MISINTERPRETATIONS that get taught are what is IDIOTIC.

When one learns and understands FULLY what the word 'God' refers to EXACTLY, and/or what ACTUALLY happens and occurs, which the word 'God' could be labelled to, then there is NOTHING 'idiotic' AT ALL here.

The NT, and other additions not included, amount to one big propaganda text trying its best to forge a cult or religious movement. Propaganda begins in lies hopefully concealed. Paul begins that process with the Evangelists following. What was 2nd hand became 3rd hand. Was this son of god so illiterate he couldn't manage a few words himself?

Even the WORDS, which come DIRECTLY from God, Itself, ARE second had by the time they get passed on through 'word of mouth' or through 'writings' the FIRST TIME.

In other words, EVERY one KNOWS, IRREFUTABLY, what IS ACTUALLY True, Right, AND Correct, from DEEP WITHIN. BUT, by the time that KNOWING gets transferred through the body, its senses, the thoughts, ASSUMPTIONS, and BELIEFS, and gets expressed through the spoken or written word, on just about EVERY occasion A MISINTERPRETATION will have taken place.

Which can be PROVED True throughout the writings in just this forum, let alone THROUGHOUT human history.

[Age]

The default state of a person is atheism

Apparently not. There are no ancient Atheist societies, no culture in history that has been devoid of religiosity.

But you are talking about cultures, or societies, which are obviously made up of 'you', adult human beings.

The quote, which you copied and wrote here, states;

The default state of a 'person' is ...

And EVERY 'person' starts off at around childbirth, and there is NO 'person' at that stage BELIEVING in some adult spoken about deity.

One then rebels against this father figure and everything follows from that.

Yes, Atheism is rebellion against God. That much is true.

But 'rebelling' AGAINST MISINTERPRETATIONS of God is NOT really a 'sin' anyway.

Whereas, what 'you', "immanuel can", do here is the BIGGEST and ONLY REAL 'sin' there IS.

'MISSING THE MARK' and MISINTERPRETING things, because of your OWN MADE UP DISTORTED BELIEFS and ASSUMPTIONS, is the GREATEST SIN, and AGAINST God DIRECTLY.

One day BEFORE that body stops pumping blood and breathing 'you' MIGHT COME to SEE and UNDERSTAND this Fact for what It is Truly SAYING and POINTING OUT.

But what colossal foolishness to rebel against the very Source of one's own life and existence, and the locus of health of one's being and one's society. What a poisonous kind of rebellion that is...a sort of rebellion against one's own good.

IF ONLY 'you' KNEW "immanuel can". IF ONLY you KNEW.

Although the 'argument from evil' is pretty fuckin solid,

Against Atheism, you mean? Yes, it is.

An Atheist has no grounds for calling anything "evil." He believes there is no objective basis for any such assessment. He's simply complaining about things that, according to his own view, are inevitable products of an indifferent universe.

So if evil actually does exist, then it means that Atheism is not true. And if Atheism is true, evil does not exist, and there's no possibility of complaint.

This person is not thinking in terms of abstract arguments against the existence of god, but rather a personal vendetta against god, at this point.

That reminds me of a quotation from C.S. Lewis, who was once a devout Atheist himself. Reflecting on that period in his life, he wrote:

"I was at that time living like many atheists; in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with him for creating a world. Why should creatures have the burden of existence forced on them without their consent?"

A "whirl of contradictions" indeed. One cannot be angry or have a vendetta against the God one declares does not exist. And can you get back at Him, the one who allegedly does not exist, by refusing to believe in His existence? The project is laughable: such an Atheist cannot even figure out what he (dis-)believes.

So no, you can't reverse-psychologize Freud's premise here.

Yes, you can. Even Freud himself thought you could. Paul Vitz has an entire book called, Faith of the Fatherless (Ignatius, 2013), in which he looks at the correlation between famous Atheists and their hatred of their own fathers. I have the book here, on my shelf, actually.

Transference of that kind is not at all rare. Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Hitchens...all could serve as case studies of that. And it's obvious even from common sense, it's no harder to long for God not to exist than to yearn for His existence. Either can be mere "wish-fulfillment fantasy," to use Freud's term.

Either way, one's desires are irrelevant to the truth. If God does not exist, all the yearning in the world won't bring Him into existence; but if He exists, He exists....regardless of all Atheist aspirations to the contrary.

If the Atheist's desire to eliminate any heavenly Father is appropriate, he'll never know it. He''ll die, and go to the oblivion he expects. But if the Christian's faith in God is right, then both the Atheist and the Christian will find it out one day. So we will see what is wish-fulfillment, and what is not.

What you do NOT seem to UNDERSTAND here is that when that body stops pumping blood and breathing 'you' will NEVER get to find out absolutely ANY thing.

The ONLY time 'you' get to find ANY thing out is in the days and age when that body is breathing and pumping blood.

[Age]

The most pathetic gods ever invented are of the OT and the NT.

Tell Him that yourself, when you see Him, if you dare.

And I promise you, one way or another, you will.

See you there.

Talk about one NOT able to back up NOR support what they BELIEVE but just keep RE-REPEATING what they BELIEVE is true ONLY.

[Alexis Jacobi]

From What Is A Christian Civilization? by Christopher Dawson.

He describes this as a general, infused influence, similar to my idea of paideia, and uses the typical term christendom (my term is christianesque).

We are now in a better position to understand what Christian civilization means. For in the past Christianity has played the same part in Western civilization as Confucianism did in China or Islam in the Middle East. It was the principle of moral unity which gave the Western peoples their spiritual values, their moral standards, and their conception of a divine law from which all human laws ultimately derive their validity
and their sanction. Without Christianity there would no doubt have been some kind of civilization in the West, but it would
have been quite a different civilization from that which we know: for it was only as Christendom — the society of Christian peoples — that the tribes and peoples and nations of the West acquired a common consciousness and a sense of cultural and spiritual unity. This is not just the theory of a Christian apologist. It is admitted just as much by historians who have no sympathy with Christianity. Edward Gibbon, for example, was notoriously hostile to the whole Christian tradition. Yet he never denied that the Church was the maker of Europe and he concludes his highly critical survey of Christian origins by showing how religious influences and “the growing authority of the Popes cemented the union of the Christian republic; and gradually produced the similar manners and the common jurisprudence which has distinguished from the rest of mankind the independent and even hostile nations of modern Europe”.

[Alexis Jacobi]

He continues:

No doubt their adhesion to the new standards [introduced through Christian education] was very imperfect in practice, but the same thing was probably true of their old standards, for there is always a considerable gap between the moral standards of a society and the moral practice of individuals, and the higher the standards, the wider the gap; so that we should naturally expect the contrast between moral principles and social behavior to be much wider in the case of Christianity than in a pagan society. Nevertheless, this does not mean that moral and spiritual values are socially negligible. They influence culture in all sorts of ways — through institutions and symbols and literature and art, as well as through personal behavior. Take for example the case of the transformation of the barbarian king or war leader by the sacramental rite of consecration as practiced throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. This obviously did not convert the ordinary feudal monarch into a St. Louis or a King Alfred, but it did establish an ideal norm by which rulers were judged and which moralized the institution itself. And the same is true of the institution of knighthood, and still more true of essentially Christian institutions, like priesthood and episcopacy and monasticism. A Christian civilization is certainly not a perfect civilization, but it is a civilization that accepts the Christian way of life as normal and frames its institutions as the organs of a Christian order. Such a civilization actually existed for a thousand years more or less. It was a living and growing organism — a great tree of culture which bore rich fruit in its season. As I say, it was by no means a perfect civilization. In its origins, it was a civilization of converted barbarians and it retained certain barbaric elements which reasserted themselves again and again in the course of its history.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Nota bene: By including, without editing out, the term ‘converted barbarians’ I seek to cast no aspersions on our own energetic Nietzscheans and their sharpened incisors. See F. Kafka An Old Manuscript.

[Nick_A]

One thing for sure, Christianity cannot be discussed on a secular dominated forum. It is meaningless almost by definition. It would be like everyone here discussing the topic of women. The frightening thing is that discussing women would probably make more sense.

[Alexis Jacobi]

So here is an interesting thought I had this morning which I will share here. I notice that IC, Nick, Belinda, Appofish, Henry and myself (and some others I may not have remembered), though we all have notably different perspectives, and differ on different points, seem to speak as 'conservatives' in the original sense of the word: conserving or strengthening the foundation or perhaps the world is the structures upon which our cultures and civilization was constructed.

But some others, for example Promethean and Dubious (though I only mention you-two because I do not very well understand what you are up to) and I might include Noble Willy (Uwot) -- and please correct me if I have it wrong -- associate themselves with another *school* as it were. The joke about 'sharp incisors' and the allegorical references to barbarians invading the Capital is of course a joke that is not a joke at all. Allegories have deep meaning.

I realize that in my case this sense -- of undermining destructiveness, of blind *tearing down*, of impetuous youthful energy & intensity of focus yet lacking a sense of what, precisely, will replace that which is shredded -- this sense of something not altogether creative let loose on the land was stimulated and then cemented when I read Robert Bork's Slouching Toward Gomorrah.

So, and here I push further on the allegory, if the barbarians do not possess our language -- meaning that certain notions and ideas and principles have become unintelligible to them -- what are *we* to do? Learn to speak jackdaw?

So I think what is helpful is to notice this division -- but what is it exactly? On what does this division stand? Is it fundamentally as in ICs case a question of whether or not one is *saved* (having been relinquished from the 'consequences of sin'), or is what is being referred to, as in Nick's case, as something uniquely inner, uniquely personal? Then there is Belinda who understands what in fact 'informed her' but has a far less defined sense of what *it* is.

So some of us have a definite platform of general, but not specific agreement, and what I suggest is that we see this in a larger context and one separate from this immediate conversation. We have sufficient ground for *cooperation* even where there are, potentially, 'unbridgable gaps'.

And this is part of my general thrust: we are either going to find a way to work together or we are going to be dissolved eventually. And here I will suggest what seems obvious to me: the forces that oppose the very principles upon which culture and civilization have been constructed can be described as *blind*, that is true, but also as ruthless. If they have their way, where will their destructive efforts end? (And here the reference is to something supra-human : chaos).

I have left out Lacewing. I wonder where she stands? (if the dichotomy I have proposed is 'real' or is my own artificial contrivance).

[Alexis Jacobi]

Also note: I think Age has established a new record: a string of 14 posts! What, what I ask, am I missing?!?

[Walker]

One thing for sure, Christianity cannot be discussed on a secular dominated forum. It is meaningless almost by definition. It would be like everyone here discussing the topic of women. The frightening thing is that discussing women would probably make more sense.

Oh, I don't know Nick. Seems like on Christian dominated forums, which I have never investigated, discussion of Christianity would be about details of the religion, rather than foundation and roots which is more suitable to philosophy. "Preaching to the choir," does reinforce the community sense for the like-minded, but it doesn't necessarily reach the heathen, although being reached is a complex matter that doesn't apply to all situations and methods.

However, discussing Christianity on a secular forum does require some rational discussion, rather than using the forum to spew bigotry towards Christianity, and Christians.

[attofishpi]

One thing for sure, Christianity cannot be discussed on a secular dominated forum.

What a totally ridiculous statement.

So far there are 2383 replies on this thread (it's called Re: Christianity)

JUST HOW SURE ARE YOU? (that Christianity is NOT being discussed on this 'secular dominated forum'?)