Christianity

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Belinda
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Re: Christianity

Post by Belinda »

henry quirk wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 4:14 pm
Belinda wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 3:41 pm
henry quirk wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 2:45 pm

If you mean: do we agree that God is the unmoved mover?

Yes (though we currently differ on His details).

Well, that was not what I asked, but was probably my next question. Here is another question if you don't mind.

What is the difference between God and atheist versions of the unmoved mover?
When I was an atheist, I had no conception of an unmoved mover. I also didn't accept infinite regress. I figured there was a third option, though I had no clue as to what that coulda been.
Thanks Henry. There is an atheist version of the unmoved mover. It so happened that you yourself learned only the theist version of the unmoved mover.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Janoah wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 12:46 amTo experiment, you would have to live forever. I don’t advise you, you will die of boredom.
This is an idea, perhaps one would call it a *concern*, about an eternal life in a hereafter.

I think it is fair to say that all notions and ideas about an eternal after-life are completely speculative. Who can or who does provide a description of such a *world* except those who deal in tremendous fancifulness -- and here I will mention the Vaishnavas (essentially the Hare Krishnas) who have the wildest, most fantastic, most colorful, most outrageous imaginings as I have ever come across.

If you have created, intelligent beings who shall live eternally in a world-beyond-this-world, you will have to provide them with endless occupations -- tasks, projects, undertakings, adventures -- or, as on Earth, people would go crazy.

The problem is solvable however if, as the story goes, one will be in some degree or other in the presence of God. (I say some degree or other because there simply must be hierarchies even in the heavenly world. There would have to be many many different levels to heaven and a degree of proximity to God*). I know all this speculation makes it all sound absurd but really when the prospect of heaven is proposed, one has no choice but to run through what that *world* would be like.

So God would have to provide the soul with a sense of ever-renewed wonder. As if touched by magic. Why not? At that point anything is possible. Since the world of heaven must be a world of imagined possibilities (like the Holodeck in Star Trek). Perhaps like what it was like as a child when, waking up in the morning on a weekend, you imagined the possibilities of the day that lay ahead and felt pure inspiration to go out into the world and enjoy to the maximum.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

henry quirk wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 9:09 pmIf God is not synonymous with the Creation, if God and Creation (or existence) are two, not one, then I'm missin' sumthin' in your posts (cuz it seems to me you're sayin' the two are synonymous).
If you are missing something, and I am not saying you are, what you might be missing is the fullest explanation of what you yourself seem to be supporting with your own reference to an infinite regress -- if that infinite regress proposes that when one has completed it one is (to put it colorfully) *in the presence of God*.

One would then have to answer: If God created the universe of expanding matter, and indeed if he created all that is (whatever it all really is, which may not be anything at all except power or force (or thought?) -- after all what is matter? I thought that the physicists said that matter is just an appearance and behind mater is just energy? But I also think that no one has any explanation of what 'force' or 'energy' is and what it is is a complete mystery);

If God created the universe and everything in it, how will you explain God's relationship to it? As a completely exteriorized energy? As something part-and-parcel of God? To what degree does God inhabit or infuse the *world* that God created ex nihilo? Is some part of God in the creation? If so, in what way?

[The Vaishnavas have an interesting and intuitively plausible way of defining the 'material world' that we live in. They defeine it as "God's external energy', to be distinguished from 'God's internal energy'. The object for them is to move, or be moved, from the external energy to the internal energy -- and that is the object of spiritual life and indeed of existence. Hell (the hell-worlds) is defined by them as being on a farther point of God's external energy. And samsara is a form of hell-existence. And one is in samsara (voyaging without a guide) because one is under the spell of nescience. That is, one does not have the proper (interiorly revealed) knowledge. Knowledge has to dawn in one, in any one of us, before we can *see* what really is, and what really is true about our life here. Many can't or don't. They exist then in 'darkness' which means lack of knowledge and awareness.]

The intelligent design people go so far as to say that *the idea of all things* had to preexist the creation of all things, and in this sense God must be the architect of all that is possible and all that is real and takes shape, right? This will sound like trivialization but we will be forced to agree that a ham & cheese sandwich had to exist within the Mind of God, would we not? So too the milkshake.

Just as the supernova and those far-off clouds that contain a billion galaxies . . .

Still, I am pretty sure that you are not capturing (because it is hard to express) what I mean when I say that God is Existence. You take it to mean what has been created. And you are right that some part of that idea is expressed in pantheism (that we live in God's body). Quite literally this is what the Jains conceived: that we live, literally, within the body of God. And in the course of (I think 86,000 incarnations, they even world out a number) we move through soul-evolution from the lower parts of God's body to the higher part, eventually residing in the 'mind' or the 'intelligence' of God. And that is where Eternity is.

So it seems to me that everyone works with (what I call) an imagined picture. The idea of the *world* (and all successive worlds) is only and always an IDEA held in the mind, in the imagination, of man. But the picture is not the reality. The picture is just a picture.

I would say that there is, and I mean this truthfully, no way to provide a *real picture* because no picture is ever real. A picture is a reference, an allusion, or a metaphor.

This is why, of course, I make an effort to explain to Immanuel Can that the Christian Story requires an exegesis, and this exegesis can only take shape through a gnostic analysis. I do not mean a Gnostic analysis as in the Gnostics. But an application of a unique capability of analysis -- a way of seeing through symbols and pictures to a Reality that cannot ever be pictured. Only (I guess) intuited.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

Janoah wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 12:07 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 1:29 am
Janoah wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 12:46 am

To experiment, you would have to live forever. I don’t advise you, you will die of boredom.
Correct. That experiment would last forever, because the infinite regress would never start.

QED
It will "never start", because it has always been.
If it has always been, then it's no case of cause-and-effect. Because causes always have to come before their alleged effects. But the cause-and-effect chains are observable. Therefore, everything has not always existed.

False premise.
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henry quirk
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Re: Christianity

Post by henry quirk »

B,

There is an atheist version of the unmoved mover.

Can you tell me more?
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 11:16 pm In my view, it's pure speculative fantasy. And there are good reasons to think so, actually. The idea of the Eternal Recurrence, for example is actually contrary to mathematical probability to an infinite degree.
Nietzsche was a rhetorician, really. But this I'll grant you: he saw the sort of nasty, incoherent, power-driven, ethics-bereft world that secularism promised to deliver, and named it for what it was.
Some part of what he *saw* can be described as speculative fantasy, but then if that is true all interpretations of life are similarly speculative, and all fantasies. But what Nietzsche described was, I think largely, the world of the Earth. I admit that this world he saw is the world as defined by science and scientific view. That is, an energy system. And I also will say that that world envisioned by Nietzsche et al is a world in which metaphysics does not apply.

And therefore it seems to me that what Nietzsche is doing, or what is being done in him (by events and causality set in motion previously) is disrupting metaphysical view. Is it a disease of the mind? Is it a sickness? Is it an *error of perception*? I think that you must say that it is.

But the alternative that you propose, and that I also relate to or have a relationship with, is really what is based on fantasy and speculation! To enter your world you will have to 'suspend judgment' and indeed 'suspend knowledge' of the Earth that Nietzsche described in what I quoted.

What you ask of people is I think literally 'the leap of faith'. But that leap is 'speculative' and literally unprovable. (Except that I think you will not say this, and that might mean that you won't admit it.)

Spiritual life can take shape in many ways and has many levels. One level is simply following the ethical commands (or 'sensible recommendations') of a respected authority. Many people in many churches do just that. How could one criticize them? Maybe they cannot do anything more?

Others seem to launch into other, more involved spiritual projects. This is where I refer to *the novel* (and I do not agree that the novel only began in the 18th century though it certainly developed there. The Golden Ass is a 'novel' or a man's journey, which is essentially a spiritual journey, and it far predates the 18th century). But when I say 'novel' I mean something that gets written as one lives it! You might have guiding ideas, and even a Guiding Spirit, but it is still a world that is invented as it is lived.

I see you as, perhaps, unfairly condemning of Nietzsche. You see him as 'benighted' and that is only part of the story.
Alexis Jacobi said: "What 'God' is, and how God enters this world, only occurs in human persons. I do not see the Christian God as being present in the natural world, because that world is really cruel and amoral.
IC wrote: "Open your eyes again, I guess."
I am not sure that you understood what I mean.

The natural world is a cruel world that operates according to strict, determined laws of relationship. One thing feeds off another. It is a closed system, an energy system, and whatever it is, though it may have been *intelligently designed*, is not the Christian imagined world. Not the world of Heaven certainly, which must oppose the way that the Earth is (a world depending on death).

There is no 'heaven world' for any other creature (that I am aware of) except man who visualizes a 'world beyond'.

But I do not mean to say that the world of God's creation (the Earth, the cosmos) is not incredible and that God is not visible in it. But that God is not the Christian God. The God of the Earth and of nature, or the world created by God that we call the Earth, is very very different from the abstract God that Christians visualize.

These two worlds can hardly be reconciled, it seems to me. I think you have no other choice but to reconcile them, yet when you do so it is done by an 'act of the will' and it does not hold together logically.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Lacewing wrote: Sat Dec 04, 2021 5:49 pmI am simply proposing that we think more broadly than the platforms we seem to admire and maintain like well-tended yards. :) I'm actually kind of baffled but intrigued by how you try to fit my questioning proposals into some kind of structure. Are we nothing more than a world of structures debating/fighting/opposing each other? Perhaps people can become so identified with their thought structures, they cannot hear or imagine beyond them? Is it really so hard to imagine living life effectively without big mental stories -- rather, finding a balance between education, experience, and awareness of the current moment, without building or subscribing to a specific rigid platform/structure of some sort? Why would we think we need to be identified through that?

Are these not reasonable questions for a philosophy forum?
All I can say is that when you have *thought more broadly* than the existent platform, that you will be naturally defining another. And if, as you say, this just goes on and on (as is implied) I wonder if anything will ever be decided at all? Will one ever be in a position to *act decisively*? Or will one always be encumbered by the doubt (in your case the certainly?) that there is something more to realize.

I don't think you need to be intrigued or baffled by my propensities -- they are quintessentially human on one hand but also (it must be said) masculine. Decisiveness and action are masculine traits (at least in the traditional view).

I was chary of quoting what Camille Paglia wrote (and she wrote many different things) but it was:
"If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts."
Obviously, Paglia's work is overall a defense (or explanation) of the masculine mind. She says that the Christian idea of God (and indeed all ideas of God) are some of the most quintessential masculine creations. (She is, I gather, an atheist).

I hope that by quoting Paglia I do not appear as offensive? I honestly do not mean to. But I do think there is a very real difference between how men act -- as tool-makers, as creators, and as conceptualists -- and how women taken on the whole feel inclined to act.

(And it was Paglia who said what she said, not me!)

So what I want to ask you -- if I may -- is what do wish to create (or should I say uncreate?) with what you propose? I find that I cannot visualize what it is that you want to see happen. (But I have no choice but to approach what you propose as something that will result in action of one sort or another! Forgive me, I was born like this!)
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

Alexis Jacobi wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 3:10 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 11:16 pm In my view, it's pure speculative fantasy. And there are good reasons to think so, actually. The idea of the Eternal Recurrence, for example is actually contrary to mathematical probability to an infinite degree.
Nietzsche was a rhetorician, really. But this I'll grant you: he saw the sort of nasty, incoherent, power-driven, ethics-bereft world that secularism promised to deliver, and named it for what it was.
Some part of what he *saw* can be described as speculative fantasy, but then if that is true all interpretations of life are similarly speculative, and all fantasies.
Umm... :shock: I really have to admit that I don't understand the logic of that conclusion. Nietzsche was speculative, therefore all interpretations are speculative? You're going to have to prove that one, I think: it's not obvious to me it's even plausible.
I admit that this world he saw is the world as defined by science and scientific view.
Oh, heavens, no. There's nothing "scientific" about Nietzsche.

You might argue he presupposed Materialism perhaps, but that's the limit of that.
...that world envisioned by Nietzsche et al is a world in which metaphysics does not apply.
That's true...and if Nietzsche had been consistent, that also would have been his conclusion. But Nietzsche also tries to "rescue" a kind of metaphysics, bringing it back in unannounced, through the back door. For while he says that, for example, we should be "beyond good and evil," devoid of such categories altogether, he still wanted us to think "life" and "will to power" were values, and that the ubermenschen were admirable models.

How is that possible in a world devoid of value standards? Well, it's not. Not even survival itself is a virtue in a world without any virtues.
And therefore it seems to me that what Nietzsche is doing, or what is being done in him (by events and causality set in motion previously) is disrupting metaphysical view. Is it a disease of the mind? Is it a sickness? Is it an *error of perception*? I think that you must say that it is.
No. It's just a wicked and selfish man, but one being courageous with his commitments, insofar as he pushes the logical conclusions of his worldview farther than most Atheists will even dare. They're impressed by his fortitude and dazzled by his high rhetoric, but they're also afraid to follow him there. Atheists generally, I've found, do not manage to be as wicked as Nietzsche tells them to have the courage to be.
To enter your world you will have to 'suspend judgment' and indeed 'suspend knowledge' of the Earth that Nietzsche described in what I quoted.
Not at all. For what Nietzsche offered was not "knowledge," in the sense that it was not the necessary reading of things. It was a reading of things derived from his first commitment: "God is dead." And if Nietzsche had been right, then the rest would have followed logically (...or most of it would have, I should say, since not even Nietzsche managed to be consistent with Nietzsche on that, as noted earlier.) But Nietzsche was not right; and his first premise, the death of God, stood on nothing but Nietzsche's rhetoric itself.

So no, one does not have to suspend judgment or reason or knowledge at all: one merely has to be willing to doubt Nietzsche's first premise, and take an alternate reading of the facts, using reason, from there. And one will arrive at the premise that God is not dead, and subsequently, that value categories are real and objective, and that life has a telos or direction, and meaning is possible, and "will to power" is not the secret of the universe, and the stars are not all black.
What you ask of people is I think literally 'the leap of faith'. But that leap is 'speculative' and literally unprovable.(Except that I think you will not say this, and that might mean that you won't admit it.)
:D You should give me more credit. I'll "admit" to you what's true. But what would be the merit in me agreeing to "admit" something I don't believe is true? So I will question it, instead.

I think you're perhaps being overimpressed with the phrase "leap of faith." I don't deny that there are people whose faith is "leapy," but I'm not one of those. So I suggest maybe we just drop the exaggerated metaphor, and just speak of "faith."

What is faith? Depending on whom you ask, you're going to get some different answers. Atheist cynics will tell you it means "believing what you know ain't true," or plunging blindly into a lie of some kind, because you're afraid of the truth, maybe. Some Pietists will say it means something like, "believing when you have no reason to believe." That's highly emotional, perhaps, and it's maybe what they themselves are admitting they are doing; but it's not a representation of Biblical faith.

Biblically speaking, faith is conviction that God's word and God's character are reliable, especially when circumstances do not immediately give us their assurances. Biblical faith is grounded in the trust that God is a Keeper of His promises, and that circumstances do not change that fact. So it casts beyond the present, but on the basis that God gives us reason to do so. And it does not step outside those parameters, speculating in some other way.

So faith isn't a "leap," when you know the One you're having faith in is the eternal, omniscient God. Rather, it's a calm, rational conviction that your trust is anchored in the only truly relaible place. And this imparts to faith a stability, rationality and certainty that the prior definitions would certainly suggest no "faith" can have.
Spiritual life can take shape in many ways and has many levels. One level is simply following the ethical commands (or 'sensible recommendations') of a respected authority.
That would actually be a definition of "compliance," and would fit any totalitarian system admirably.
Many people in many churches do just that. How could one criticize them? Maybe they cannot do anything more?
Why "cannot" they?

I think they can. And if they can and don't, then they're certainly criticizable on that basis.
Others seem to launch into other, more involved spiritual projects. This is where I refer to *the novel* (and I do not agree that the novel only began in the 18th century though it certainly developed there. The Golden Ass is a 'novel' or a man's journey, which is essentially a spiritual journey, and it far predates the 18th century).
There's debate about the origin date of the novel -- when did, for example, the mere "epistolary method" become capable of the features of what we should rightly define as a "novel"?

Most experts accept that the few earlier "proto-novels" were not true novels, and that the form did not really come into its own until novels like "Pamela" in the 18th Century. But it's of little consequence, since the "novel" form is certainly not very old, historically, and nowhere near old enough, by any account, to have relevance to the Bible.
I see you as, perhaps, unfairly condemning of Nietzsche. You see him as 'benighted' and that is only part of the story.

No, I seem him as (mostly) consistent with his own (incorrect) theory of how things are. I wouldn't call him "benighted" in that sense, because he at least used reason to extend his suppositions fairly far; but his were the wrong suppositions, and they were only his "suppositions," so the conclusions were, to that extent, not "light" but "darkness."
The natural world is a cruel world that operates according to strict, determined laws of relationship. One thing feeds off another. It is a closed system, an energy system, and whatever it is, though it may have been *intelligently designed*, is not the Christian imagined world.
Actually, it's exactly what the Christian "imagines" it is. It's a good world, but one marred by sin. It's fallen, and is deeply not what it ought to have been; but it's also inherently a gift from God, as all life is derived from Him, and contains both good and bad elements, though not in equal proportions. And as a Christian "imagines," it's also a temporary world, a moribund world, one headed toward its own end. But it is a redeemable world, as well, one in which the grace of God is still present and active, and rescues men from the doom toward which they are precipitating themselves.

All of that is eminently realistic, I think, and reflects the observable world quite accurately. There's a profound realism to Christianity, a kind of truth-telling that the fatalistic pessimism of the Materialist and the utopian dreaming of the ideological Atheist wholly misses, I think.
There is no 'heaven world' for any other creature (that I am aware of) except man who visualizes a 'world beyond'.
The Bible speaks of "a new heaven and a new earth." And while "other creatures" do not come into blessing apart from mankind's salvation, the natural world is most certainly cleansed and restored to life in the Kingdom of God. As the saying goes, "The lion lies down with the lamb" in the new world. So I think, maybe, you aren't aware of the right passages on that.
...the abstract God that Christians visualize.
"Abstract"? :shock: Such a word. Now I'm certain you aren't aware of what Christianity actually "visualizes."

I have no idea what your frame of reference, or your experience, makes you inclined to think "Christians" are or believe about that. I'm quite certain it's nothing like what Christianity actually teaches, or like what I think. But I think that further exploration of what the Bible actually says about that would be useful. However, that's a topic as large as the Bible itself, really.
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henry quirk
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Re: Christianity

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Alexis,

if that infinite regress proposes that when one has completed it one is (to put it colorfully) *in the presence of God*.

An infinite regress, in context, simply means there ain't no beginning; the causal chain or chains just extend back infinitely and (presumably) forward infinitely (infinite progress). Such a thing is counter-intuitive, not supported by our current understandin' of Reality, and -- of course -- precludes the possibility of a Creator-God.


If God created the universe and everything in it, how will you explain God's relationship to it? As a completely exteriorized energy? As something part-and-parcel of God? To what degree does God inhabit or infuse the *world* that God created ex nihilo? Is some part of God in the creation? If so, in what way?

I reckon God, as Creator, has the same relationship the novelist has to his novel, or an artist has to his work: one extends as codified thinkin' from the other (the art from the artist). The art bears the stamp of the artist, but is not the artist.


The intelligent design people go so far as to say that *the idea of all things* had to preexist the creation of all things, and in this sense God must be the architect of all that is possible and all that is real and takes shape, right? This will sound like trivialization but we will be forced to agree that a ham & cheese sandwich had to exist within the Mind of God, would we not? So too the milkshake.

Not necessarily. We write open-ended comp sims, settin' up initial conditions and often findin' those sims go in unexpected directions. The video game industry takes advantage of this thru open world games.

Minecraft, for example: what a player does, creates, attempts, occurs within a world extendin' out of the initial conditions, but the initial conditions don't dictate what the player does or creates or attempts; in the same way, the initial conditions may say, for example, 'there will be mountains', but the initial conditions say nuthin' about where mountains will be, the sizes or shapes of those mountains, or what treasures, if any, they'll contain. Further, if a player inputs random numbers (the seed) into the world-generation software, all manner of absurdity can pop up in flora, fauna, and geography, all possible within the context of the initial conditions but none overtly predictable from those conditions.

As I (as a deist) conceive The Creator, He set the initial conditions (cause & effect, universal constants, etc.). Somewhere in those initial conditions He inserted the necessity for free will, reason, and conscience (givin' the game its purpose). The result is our deterministic, but open-ended, Reality and Wildcard us.


So it seems to me that everyone works with (what I call) an imagined picture. The idea of the *world* (and all successive worlds) is only and always an IDEA held in the mind, in the imagination, of man. But the picture is not the reality. The picture is just a picture.

I'm a direct realist: I think we experience the world largely as it is. And where direct experience isn't possible, we can reason our way to understanding.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

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Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 3:58 pmUmm... :shock: I really have to admit that I don't understand the logic of that conclusion. Nietzsche was speculative, therefore all interpretations are speculative? You're going to have to prove that one, I think: it's not obvious to me it's even plausible.
I think that we struggle to comprehend one another, and in this case you struggle to comprehend me, because of an essential, but perhaps not yet located, difference about how we view *reality*: the manifest world.

My view is that science, materialism, the overturning of the Scholastic view of reality (here I use the term *interpretation*), provided a clearer picture of the 'real world'. The world of things. The world of biology. Everything that we can name that derives from this revelation in how things are seen.

Your assertion, not mine, is that Nietzsche 'speculates' when he described a world as he did in the paragraph that I quoted. And I respond by saying if he speculates then any view, and all views, are speculations in the same or similar degree.

But I do not think that Nietzsche is speculating when he describes an Energy System when he answers the question of what 'life' is here on this planet. I think he is describing, and with typical Nietzschean rhetoric and style (if you will), what is seen, but it is not Nietzsche's invention, it is essentially how the scientific/rationalistic mind sees *the world*.

And that world, when pictured as an abstraction, and this Nietzsche does, is a world in which metaphysics (and certainly Christian metaphysics) has no part. And that is why his vision is *terrible*. When I say terrible I mean it somewhat differently. I mean it in the sense that it undermines a previously-established metaphysics.

He seers, as it were, *the terrible world* that I also attempt to present: the real world of cruel biological and physical/material process.

So what I am saying is that Nietzsche saw that world, and was in this sense overpowered by his Vision (as seems to be the case: it pulled him apart or in any case it is speculated that it proved too much for him).

So my view is that this is the Real World. The Real World is the world going on around us. Or put another way, a stronger way, it is the world that would go on around us if we were not here. The material/physical world of circulating phenomena and the biological world of lower-order beings without the capacity to visualize themselves, the world they exist in.

That world is completely devoid of metaphysics. Only man conceives of metaphysics and *sees* metaphysical principles or ideas operating in that world.

My effort is to establish that this is so. That this is *the world* that is seen, defined and explained by science, but moreover it is the world that many many people live in. Insofar as we do indeed live in our *conceived worlds*. Our imagined worlds. (The worlds that we see and entertain within our imagined sphere: our interpreted worlds. Here I reference *our metaphysical dreams of the world* as did Weaver. And I think the science-view IS a metaphysics, because all views are like that: seeing the world from above, but it is a much more limited metaphysics.)

So two things loom large for me: one is man's imagination. Not reality, but what he imagines. The other element here is what man interprets.

So imagination and interpretation are *things* or areas that I focus un.

Christianity is, in this sense, an interpretive system and it stands in relation to other interpretive systems. Christianity may contain, and I think does contain, many truths, but it is still a *picture*, and the picture is not reality. The picture can be close and accurate, and the picture can be distant and inaccurate.

This is how I see things. I do not think you can see things in this way, and perhaps in no similar way, because you define Absolute Truths that are, well, absolute. The way you see, and what you see, is absolute. It can't be argued against.

In this sense I can entertain, and have no alternative but to entertain, degrees of relativism. That is, relativism of speculative, metaphysical systems that are imposed through man on *the world*. These are relative to one another.

Possibly the only thing, the only stuff, the only 'reality' that can be defined as solid and undoubted is . . . the world that science defines. This is just a fact for me. I can't see a way around it.

It does not mean that I myself abandon metaphysics!

Does this make any more sense?
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

henry quirk wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 4:13 pmNot necessarily. We write open-ended comp sims, settin' up initial conditions and often findin' those sims go in unexpected directions. The video game industry takes advantage of this thru open world games.
Then what you are saying, what you propose as true or the way things are, is that within the simulation that is man's world man could invent things about which God had no knowledge? That did not, in the sense we are talking about, originate in God?

That is a curious idea but I am not opposed to it.

When I said, with some humor, that the idea of a ham sandwich had to have been preconceived as an *idea* just as a supernova or a massive gas-cloud that contained thousands or billions of galaxies, I think the idea is that nothing can exist, in any sense, independently of God. All things are expressions of *ideas* (intelligent designs is how it is described) and had to pre-exist prior to the manifestation.

I think this is more logically tenable.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 3:58 pm The Bible speaks of "a new heaven and a new earth." And while "other creatures" do not come into blessing apart from mankind's salvation, the natural world is most certainly cleansed and restored to life in the Kingdom of God. As the saying goes, "The lion lies down with the lamb" in the new world. So I think, maybe, you aren't aware of the right passages on that.
If in this world there are 'lions & lambs' and they do not lie down together now, it is my own view, and I say it is a necessary one, that they will never lie down together.

The phenomenal world and the world of biological being will go on & on & on & on just as it has for all those millions and billions of years.

What you do (it seems to me) is refer to a story the elements of which you take as 'reality'. That the world, this world, will be wrapped up one day, renewed, made afresh, and all the relationships in that world will change.

Just as you say: the lion will not eat the lamb, the lion will lie down with the lamb. The shark will not eat carrion and will not attack seals. Enzymes will no longer decompose leaves in the forest. The entire format of the world will become something radically else.

Death shall have no dominion is I guess a way to put it.

I see all of this as Story. I am sorry if I can do no better.

If there is a World-to-Come it will be another sort of world. For example a world in another plane of existence. A higher, spiritual world. This is something that makes sense to me. And it seems conceivable.

So as you now must surely note I have no other means available to me but to employ gnosis (knowledge, subtlety) in an endeavor of exegesis.
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henry quirk
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Re: Christianity

Post by henry quirk »

Then what you are saying, what you propose as true or the way things are, is that within the simulation that is man's world man could invent things about which God had no knowledge? That did not, in the sense we are talking about, originate in God?

Kinda, yeah. I imagine Him aware of all the possibilities, but see no reason He must be aware which possibilities would or will translate into actuality. And, as I think on it, there's no reason He has to be aware of all the possibilities.

Remember: I'm not a theist. I'm not bound up by the idea God is intimately involved in Creation. Mebbe one of His reasons for makin' this universe was to experience surprise.


I think the idea is that nothing can exist, in any sense, independently of God. All things are expressions of *ideas* (intelligent designs is how it is described) and had to pre-exist prior to the manifestation.

Well, it depends on God's nature and intent, yeah?

The Christian God is said to have numbered every hair on my head (damn few left now) before I was conceived. The deist God is mebbe uninterested in my hair and would have to count them if He became interested (simply becuz He doesn't know).


As I said up-thread: I used to call God Crom. Here's why...

He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul. What else shall men ask of the gods? Robert E. Howard

Meaning: He made man a free will (self-directing & - responsible) and He gave man a compass (conscience). What we do with ourselves is on us.
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Janoah
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Re: Christianity

Post by Janoah »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 2:50 pm
Janoah wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 12:07 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 1:29 am
Correct. That experiment would last forever, because the infinite regress would never start.

QED
It will "never start", because it has always been.
If it has always been, then it's no case of cause-and-effect. Because causes always have to come before their alleged effects. But the cause-and-effect chains are observable. Therefore, everything has not always existed.

False premise.
You are marking time, I already told you, even Aristotle made it clear, there are no problems with infinity in time.
Well, chains are observable, and watch them forever.
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Lacewing
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Re: Christianity

Post by Lacewing »

Alexis Jacobi wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 3:24 pm All I can say is that when you have *thought more broadly* than the existent platform, that you will be naturally defining another.
Just as we do from the time we are born and throughout our lives WHILE accomplishing a lot. What is it that makes us think we have to stop and build a kingdom on a particular platform? What is that about? We say we've found the answer and we've figured it out. Really?
Alexis Jacobi wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 3:24 pmAnd if, as you say, this just goes on and on (as is implied) I wonder if anything will ever be decided at all? Will one ever be in a position to *act decisively*?
Perhaps the natural response to the proposal of 'thinking beyond boundaries' is to imagine that we will 'fall off the edge'. When we think beyond the platforms we've settled onto, we are not suddenly leaping off into uncertainty... we are simply allowing ourselves to think further. And by doing so, new stepping stones appear... perhaps one-at-a-time, at the pace we can handle. We can follow those to see and accomplish more than we would have experienced sitting on a particular platform. Similar to how we've moved through our uncertain lives... seeking new options when we need to move beyond the current territory.

Do we... as 'adults'... eventually consider ourselves successful when we get everything ordered well enough that we can convince ourselves we don't NEED to move, expand, or think much anymore? Maybe we translate this into: we've got it 'figured out'... and we're sitting/positioned in 'truth'. Then, we fight with other adults over the correctness of platforms.

So, why not question these platforms and how they might actually be limiting us? We can still use what we've learned from them, to look beyond them. How much more broadly might we be able to comprehend... in a way that isn't so intently focused on serving ourselves? Perhaps we are perfectly happy to stay on those platforms without looking further, but then we shouldn't exclaim that they are the ultimate truth. That doesn't make sense.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 3:24 pm Or will one always be encumbered by the doubt (in your case the certainly?) that there is something more to realize.
There are countless things we don't know and have not experienced. Are we encumbered by that realization? Or do we ignore it (and its potential lure or unsettling uncertainty) by subscribing to a platform that suits us? Are our 'traveling days' over? :lol:
Alexis Jacobi wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 3:24 pm I don't think you need to be intrigued or baffled by my propensities -- they are quintessentially human on one hand but also (it must be said) masculine. Decisiveness and action are masculine traits (at least in the traditional view).
Ah. Interesting consideration.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 3:24 pm I was chary of quoting what Camille Paglia wrote (and she wrote many different things) but it was:
"If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts."
Probably true. :lol:
Alexis Jacobi wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 3:24 pmObviously, Paglia's work is overall a defense (or explanation) of the masculine mind. She says that the Christian idea of God (and indeed all ideas of God) are some of the most quintessential masculine creations.
And such creations are often intended to serve and glorify man, and to give man 'power', yes?
Alexis Jacobi wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 3:24 pmI hope that by quoting Paglia I do not appear as offensive?
Not at all.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 3:24 pmSo what I want to ask you -- if I may -- is what do wish to create (or should I say uncreate?) with what you propose? I find that I cannot visualize what it is that you want to see happen. (But I have no choice but to approach what you propose as something that will result in action of one sort or another! Forgive me, I was born like this!)
Hee hee. I was born like this too. Okay, my honest answer is that I wish to continue painting this life with as many beautiful colors and techniques as I can discover, to expand and improve the experience. Not in a frantic 'answer-seeking' way... but in a calm and happy state of enjoyment. And I do this by following stepping-stones that appear beyond my own ideas. Stepping stones that lead me to see and do and receive things I wouldn't have otherwise thought of if I'd fully subscribed to any particular platform or reality or truth. So, my 'reality' keeps expanding.

There is not a particular structure or end result. There is a broader experience and more capability than I would otherwise have, moment-to-moment throughout life. I have built/created many structures for various purposes, but they (as everything) are temporary -- so I utilize them while they stand, but I do not limit myself to them, nor define my life or myself through them. They are props for an experience. Does that make sense to you the way I described it?
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