Christianity

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iambiguous
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Re: Christianity

Post by iambiguous »

henry quirk wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 1:54 amPro, and others like him, in-forum, think we're all just animals, that morality is a joke, and that people like you, Mannie, me, Walker, etc., are fools.
Just for the record, we are all animals. And morality only becomes a joke, some insist, when you are actually able to convince yourself that of all the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of moral narratives that have been configured into arrogant, authoritarian dogmas down through the centuries, only yours really is the One True Path.

I would certainly not argue that my own is.

Really, how intellectually shallow must someone be in order to accomplish this? How is it not but another historical and cultural manifestation of the ubiquitous psychological defense mechanism?

I believe what I do because the belief itself is the source of my solace.

And then not having enough confidence in your own intelligence to think the belief up yourself, you have to attribute it to a God, the God. And, in turn, even though there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of religious narratives that have been configured into denominational dogmas down through the centuries, only yours really is the One True Path as well.

Do they ever really sit down and, introspectively, think that through?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

iambiguous wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 2:44 am
henry quirk wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 1:54 amPro, and others like him, in-forum, think we're all just animals, that morality is a joke, and that people like you, Mannie, me, Walker, etc., are fools.
Just for the record, we are all animals. And morality only becomes a joke, some insist, when you are actually able to convince yourself that of all the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of moral narratives that have been configured into arrogant, authoritarian dogmas down through the centuries, only yours really is the One True Path...
Do they ever really sit down and, introspectively, think that through?
Well, let's do that. Let's "sit down" and "introspectively think through" that claim.

It goes, "To believe there is any singular moral truth is to make morality into a joke." It's to be "arrogant, authoritarian" and "dogmatic."

So...to believe this requires that we first believe a prior premise. That premise is, that believing one's morals are right is wrong. Absolutely wrong.

And it's absolutely, objectively, indisputably wrong to be "arrogant, authoritarian and dogmatic," as well. We have to believe that, too.

If you don't believe these things, then the statement is not believable itself. It would not be any indictment of "making morality into a joke" if deciding on a single moral truth, or being "arrogant, etc." were not objectively wrong. So it has to be.

The author of such a claim believes in an objective moral precept: namely, that declaring support for a singular morality is wrong. That's his 10-Commandments-in-one, if you like: his absolute moral bedrock.

So now, let's "introspect."

Where did he get this confidence that being committed to objective morality is wrong? And is he only subjectively committed to it, or does he think it's absolute and beyond doubt?

And what we quickly see is that his veneer of inclusiveness and tolerance is something he does not practice himself. Rather, he's "dogmatic, arrogant and authoritarian" toward anybody who believes in a singular morality.

He's run afoul of his own moral absolute, in other words. He's "hoist with his own petard," to use the Shakespearean metaphor. He's failed to introspect, and unilaterally declared other people wrong, even while claiming to be open-minded.

Oh how the worm turns, when one lives and dies on his own counsel. :wink:
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Dontaskme
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Re: Christianity

Post by Dontaskme »

Immanuel Can wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 1:50 am
Dubious wrote: Sat May 21, 2022 5:07 am ...DEAD END.
You through yet? 8)
When the Student is ready the Teacher DISAPPEARS!! .. you through yet?

Image

Just rude!
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

AJ: Non-denominationalism is a specific branch of Protestantism that originated in America.
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 1:02 amIt did not, actually. You're wrong on your history again. It arose in England, in the 19th Century. It was later transferred to the US, but like Anglicanism, took a rather different form on the far side of the Pond. (These are details you don't care about, I see.)
It has been curious over the months to observe you introduce irrelevant details as a tactic to derail conversations but more commonly to control conversations. For example Non-denominational Protestant Christianity is nearly absolutely an American religious movement, related to the Great Awakening which was an extremely significant cultural event in the United States. It is part of the Restoration Movement:
The Restoration Movement (also known as the American Restoration Movement or the Stone–Campbell Movement, and pejoratively as Campbellism) is a Christian movement that began on the United States frontier during the Second Great Awakening (1790–1840) of the early 19th century. The pioneers of this movement were seeking to reform the church from within and sought "the unification of all Christians in a single body patterned after the church of the New Testament."
So I would say that an understanding of the background to your brand of Christianity will likely shed a great deal of light on the content of your specific preaching on this forum. I call this 'contextual background' whereas, as a defensive posture, you call it 'ad hominem'. You say my approach is a fallacious approach and yet it is obvious that it can actually help one, the readership here for example, to get a better handle on the nature of your preaching. Certainly it will help to grasp the differences that arise between your and my perspectives and positions.

For example the following paragraph (from the Wiki page on The Churches of Christ, one of the churches connected with the Restoration Movement and American Non-denominationalism) reveals some important details about your specific statements and your specific orientations. And these are in contrast to my own and thus to point out these differences is useful and productive -- that is for anyone interested in the nuts-and-bolts of these different perspectives:
The Churches of Christ are autonomous Christian congregations associated with one another through distinct beliefs and practices based on their interpretation of the Bible. Represented in the United States and one of several branches across the world, they believe in using only Bible texts for their doctrine and practices, citing examples from the early Christian church as described in the New Testament. Most typically, their distinguishing beliefs are that of the necessity of baptism for salvation and the prohibition of instruments in worship. They identify themselves as being nondenominational.
So, this is why I point out that you carved out for yourself a really odd religious position: you are a modern, and ultra-modern in fact, and yet you provide yourself with a tool, a kind of transport device, with which you hop over all of Catholic and Christian history -- what Christianity actually is -- and orient yourself anew in a strict Gospel Christianity. What especially interests me is the emphasis on *salvation* which is a major thrust in your evangelism. Now it is true that all of Christianity places emphasis on salvation, but each emphasis is unique and different.
IC: But let all that be true, and it's still irrelevant. The only important question is, "Which tradition, if either, got Christianity basically right?" And to discern that, you have to look beyond any Protestants or Catholics at all, and look at the Biblical record itself.
What I notice in you, and often point out, is your rigidity and your absolutism. Is this wrong? That is not the tack I take. It is more that I want to do what you cannot yourself do: provide me with the necessary background to be able to *locate* you within our present historical moment. As you have recognized, because I often say it, each of us in this conversation needs to a) understand ourselves and what has informed us, and b) clearly and fairly explain ourselves to others. It is part of "intellectual decency".
Which you do not want to do. But would give you a better definition. But it seems you don't want one. You seem happy with your "Christian culture" theory, because it's big, clumsy and simple. So I get the attraction, but don't admire the historicism.
Here you do what you often do -- you rephrase what I have said in a uniquely negative way. It is a form of spin. You did this with your false accusation of a resort to 'ad hominem' argument, whereas I clearly and coherently explain why my procedure cannot be seen as such by any measure. Here, you have latched on to my thoughts on European Christian culture as the core backgrounding of Europe. And your technique and strategy is to presumptuously declare that Europe has never been Christian!

This is not a small declaration. And since this is your core position it certainly can be examined.

Of course you will ask the question "Which tradition got it basically right". But in your case it is not really a question, it is a declaration. And it functions as a 'steam-roller' that provides you with a self-declared right to dismiss many things that should not be dismissed. And when one examines your view, the view of Non-denominationalists generally, and when one does that in the context of America and American culture, you will find that it is part of a self-declaration unique to the American mode of self-view and self-interpretation. It dovetails into a sort of metaphysical Americanism. The spread of the churches which have their roots in America and resulted from the Great Awakening can and should then be examined. And I pointed out that I have made an effort to do this by reading Harold Bloom's book The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation. (My assertion would be that, despite your fundamentalism, it is more accurate to see both your religious background and your Christian posture as an expression of post-Christianity). It connects therefore to the view held, consciously and unconsciously, by Americans that they are 'blessed' and under God's protective rays. So these self-assertive and non-self-reflective assumptions and assertions can be examined. But to do so one needs to provide some of the background. And this is why I have sought to bring some of this out.
...you have to look beyond any Protestants or Catholics at all, and look at the Biblical record itself.
Well here you make a declarative statement borne out of your Non-denominational ideology. Yes, one could in a manner of speaking put on blinders and neglect and negate what early Christians thought and did in the formative centuries (first through fourth say). And yes one could, as an ultra-modern, choose to regard only the Gospels and the Epistles as the sole source for the definition of what Christianity should and must be. It is not that this choice is inconceivable or non-logical (I am unsure what terms to use) but it has had specific results -- in the formation of a uniquely Americanized Christianity which can be understood when the Great Awakening and the Restoration Movement are examined, and as well when one examines your specific declarations and assertions.

Thus again the *contextualization* of you, your preaching effort here, and the declarative statements that you make can be fairly examined.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Iambiguous wrote: Just for the record, we are all animals. And morality only becomes a joke, some insist, when you are actually able to convince yourself that of all the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of moral narratives that have been configured into arrogant, authoritarian dogmas down through the centuries, only yours really is the One True Path...

Do they ever really sit down and, introspectively, think that through?
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 4:47 amWell, let's do that. Let's "sit down" and "introspectively think through" that claim. It goes, "To believe there is any singular moral truth is to make morality into a joke." It's to be "arrogant, authoritarian" and "dogmatic." So...to believe this requires that we first believe a prior premise. That premise is, that believing one's morals are right is wrong. Absolutely wrong. And it's absolutely, objectively, indisputably wrong to be "arrogant, authoritarian and dogmatic," as well. We have to believe that, too.
Here, you have done once again what I have often pointed out that you do: you have re-phrased what was said, and manipulated the core message in what was said, and thereby transformed it into what you wish your interlocutor to have said -- so that you can argue against it through those specific terms that are important to you!

What I think Iambiguous is broaching is the fact that there are many different moral and moralizing systems which, in one notable aspect, have shown that they dovetail more often than not with authoritarian cultural trends or tendencies. It is true indeed that 'authoritarian dogmas', to use this term as a descriptor and without attaching a negative animus to it, is more or less precisely what religious authority does. Be it Buddhist, Taoist, Vedic, Catholic and generally Christian.

The question is not really that this is done, it certainly is done, but to examine the specific content of a given system and come to decisions about its sensibility and value. This is generally my own take and one reason I tend to champion Christian theological values, not negate them or erase them. In your case, Mr Can, when you examine other systems you do so with destructive and undermining intent -- because of your specific evangelical commitments.

Fundamentally, Iambiguous (if I understand his position) has not been convinced that the assertion of the Christian God, which is a wide god-concept with specific tenets and declarations about life, history, teleology, meaning, value and much else, which is based on a specific articulation of metaphysics, has not in his mind been sufficiently proven as being 'real'. He asks for a 'proof' to be provided that will resolve all his doubts. But as we all know (Henry knows this, Nick knows this, and I know this) there is no 'proof' of the sort and order that he seeks.

You have twisted what Iambiguous has said into a statement against which, as a contemporary Christian Cultural Warrior (having just read a title by James Lindsay I should add!) you feel piously justified in bringing out your heavy Logic-Armaments to carry on ideological battle.
And morality only becomes a joke, some insist, when you are actually able to convince yourself that of all the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of moral narratives that have been configured into arrogant, authoritarian dogmas down through the centuries, only yours really is the One True Path.

I would certainly not argue that my own is.
I would point out that in Immanuel Can's argumentation -- it is a fundamental assertion -- that you either accept what he declares to be true, which he states is not what he says but what Jesus Christ says -- or you will be alienated from God in the afterworld (which is his own, somewhat unusual twist on 'hellfire' and 'eternal punishment').

It cannot be denied that this is, and has been, a fundamental tenet of Christian belief. So it is fair to say that IC is here fronting *the One True Path*. Fair statement.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

Alexis Jacobi wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 2:02 pm
AJ: Non-denominationalism is a specific branch of Protestantism that originated in America.
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 1:02 amIt did not, actually. You're wrong on your history again. It arose in England, in the 19th Century. It was later transferred to the US, but like Anglicanism, took a rather different form on the far side of the Pond. (These are details you don't care about, I see.)
Non-denominational Protestant Christianity is nearly absolutely an American religious movement, related to the Great Awakening which was an extremely significant cultural event in the United States.
You're arriving at the party late. The story had already started, in England.

Yes, the Great Awakening was a big deal, at least in some denominational circles. But no, it was not the first realization of this inclination. And if we want to be absolutely precise, we'd have to go back before even that, to groups like the Reformers, and before that, to the Waldenses. Because the habit of returning to Scripture as primary authority, when the "main church" of the day goes sideways is just about as old as Christianity itself.
IC: But let all that be true, and it's still irrelevant. The only important question is, "Which tradition, if either, got Christianity basically right?" And to discern that, you have to look beyond any Protestants or Catholics at all, and look at the Biblical record itself.
What I notice in you, and often point out, is your rigidity and your absolutism.
What I notice is that you don't know what to look at in order to define "Christianity." There could be nothing more obvious than that you have to go to the Source...yet somehow, that seems just to obscure a thought for you to grasp...very curious.
As you have recognized, because I often say it...

I recognize you say things. And I recognize what you say as words. Does sit mean I have to agree with what the words convey?

No, of course not. You may say things often (and indeed, do) for which I perceive some modification or even gainsaying is the appropriate response.

We do not have to take a cultural-constructionist reading of ourselves, nor regard ourselves as in any way predetermined by particular social conditions. The phenomenon of conversion from one ideology to another, so routine as it is, proves that to be in error.
...your technique and strategy is to presumptuously declare that Europe has never been Christian!
I don't "presume" it at all. I merely point it out as a fact, because any reasonable defintion of Christian would quickly disabuse you of that error.
Of course you will ask the question "Which tradition got it basically right". But in your case it is not really a question, it is a declaration.
You need to ask it, too.

And ironically, you have your own "answer." It's that I'm wrong and narrow, and your idea of "cultural Christianity" is right. That's your declaration, your "steam roller," if you prefer.

The only difference is this: I have a criterial definition of "Christian," and you don't. So I have a case, and you have presupposition.
...you have to look beyond any Protestants or Catholics at all, and look at the Biblical record itself.
Well here you make a declarative statement borne out of your Non-denominational ideology.

Not at all.

If you are going to call somebody a "Christ-one," a "Christian," then it's reasonable for you to also be able to say how that person is rightfully associated with Christ. If there is simply no criterial connection point, then your naming of an entity or person as such is just nonsense.

Again I return to the obvious question, which I cannot help but note, you never even attempt to answer: what part of the Inquisition, the Crusades or the Wars of Religion appeals to you as the sort of thing Christ would require?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

Alexis Jacobi wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 2:23 pm
Iambiguous wrote: Just for the record, we are all animals. And morality only becomes a joke, some insist, when you are actually able to convince yourself that of all the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of moral narratives that have been configured into arrogant, authoritarian dogmas down through the centuries, only yours really is the One True Path...

Do they ever really sit down and, introspectively, think that through?
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 4:47 amWell, let's do that. Let's "sit down" and "introspectively think through" that claim. It goes, "To believe there is any singular moral truth is to make morality into a joke." It's to be "arrogant, authoritarian" and "dogmatic." So...to believe this requires that we first believe a prior premise. That premise is, that believing one's morals are right is wrong. Absolutely wrong. And it's absolutely, objectively, indisputably wrong to be "arrogant, authoritarian and dogmatic," as well. We have to believe that, too.
Here, you have done once again what I have often pointed out that you do: you have re-phrased what was said, and manipulated the core message in what was said, and thereby transformed it into what you wish your interlocutor to have said -- so that you can argue against it through those specific terms that are important to you!
Not at all. I think I have fairly represented his view, and shown exactly what the logical consequences of it must be.

If he thinks it's wrong for a person to declare contrary moral narratives to be "the One Truth Path," then Iam is either expressing a private preference or an attempted objective moral claim.

If it's just a preference, then it's just a preference; but then, nobody needs to regard him as arguing for anything anybody else should also think. But if he's arguing so as to convince, then he's taking for granted his own objective moral premise, namely, that refuting contrary moral narratives is objectively wrong.

It cannot be denied that this is, and has been, a fundamental tenet of Christian belief.

If it is, then you've just killed your own definition of "Christian" as a mere cultural artifact. You've given it at least one specific criterion, and most of Europe would never have fitted into it. Catholicism, for example, teaches that membership and the sacriments of the Church, not the individual's faith, are what saves. So your whole theory is imperilled by this admission.

I doubt you'll notice that, though: your defintion of "Christian" is so ill-formed and elastic that it could refer to practically anything, it would seem. Of course, if you make it that, then that also renders it useless in any explanatory function; but I doubt you're going to notice that, either.
So it is fair to say that IC is here fronting *the One True Path*.

Fair? Perhaps. But it presumes something yet to be proved...the very thing with which this message begins. Namely, is it "wrong" to argue for "the One True Path," or is it objectively right to argue for something else?

In which case, Iam would be saying, "The One True Path" that is absolutely right is to declare that there is no "One True Path."

And make sense of that, if you can. 8)
Nick_A
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Re: Christianity

Post by Nick_A »

This thread indicates a reality defining the modern world. We don't know what Christianity is in comparison to the many paths of Christendom people argue for.

What is step one on the Christian path? This is a dangerous question. I've been banned on sites including ILP for suggesting it. It is considered too disruptive. The first step is not limited to Christianity but Plato also referred to it as well.

John 8:34

“Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.”

For Plato, we are attached to the shadows on the wall in Plato' cave. In either case we are powerless to experience reality and the conscious potential for humanity. Sin and attachments prevent it.

What could be more insulting then step one; admitting we are slaves to sin and the shadows. Obviously discussing it is so controversial that a person can be banned as disruptive. How can an educated person graduating from the finest universities be considered a slave? preposterous! Yet it is the first step to freedom regardless of the growls from the Great Beast.
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iambiguous
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Re: Christianity

Post by iambiguous »

iambiguous wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 6:46 pm
1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious/spiritual path
Nick_A wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 9:12 pm If you understand why the ONE cannot be proven by discursive thought, you are closer to the truth. God IS while creation follows the process of existence. Can you sense the difference?
I don't know how to make myself any clearer. My interest in the Christian God revolves around the fact that, morally, "I" am "fractured and fragmented" given the arguments I make in the OPs here:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296

And given the fact that, existentially, oblivion is more or less right around the corner for me. Christians argue that an objective morality can be embodied if one accepts Jesus Christ as his or her personal savior. And that oblivion is not the fate of "I" at all...that immortality and salvation await those who become faithful Christians.

But: there are many, many, many other folks [here and elsewhere] who insist that if objective morality and immortality and salvation are important to me, it is their God or their spiritual path that will take me there.

Okay, which path is it? Why the Christian path? Where is the demonstrable proof that will win me over to their path?

Go ahead, really, really, really think about it: why has the God not made it abundantly clear to mere mortals how to reach Him? Both before and after they die?

But, no, straight back up into the spiritual clouds you go...
Nick_A wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 9:12 pm Christianity is not about the ONE or God if you prefer; the source of creation. Christianity is about the Christ and the significance of the Cross within creation. Yet people want to argue about our ineffable source with the discursive mind which is just foolish.
What on Earth does this have to do with demonstrating the existence of the Christian God in Heaven on par with demonstrating the existence of the Pope in the Vatican?

Again: With so much at stake!!!

Look, we both know there are any number of folks here who will be more than happy to accommodate you in discussions of the ONE, or discussions of "Christ and the significance of the Cross within creation."

Way, way, way up there in the spiritual clouds.

But I'm not one of them.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

IC: But let all that be true, and it's still irrelevant. The only important question is, "Which tradition, if either, got Christianity basically right?" And to discern that, you have to look beyond any Protestants or Catholics at all, and look at the Biblical record itself.
AJ: What I notice in you, and often point out, is your rigidity and your absolutism.
IC: What I notice is that you don't know what to look at in order to define "Christianity." There could be nothing more obvious than that you have to go to the Source...yet somehow, that seems just to obscure a thought for you to grasp...very curious.
At this point, and after these various months of conversation, and as a result of thought and realization as well as introspection and self-analysis, I am in the process of coming to conclusions. I cannot say that I have a total certainty though. And I think that this is how it should be.

I know that you desire to keep things on an abstract plane. Deviation from that you take as 'ad hominem'. However for me, in this conversation, it is to a large extent you, your attitude, the way that you use the faith, and what I perceive in you as deceptiveness, lack of honesty, and what I have called your *false front* -- despite all this crap about 'going back to the Gospel sources' (which, I should say, could never not be an important process for a believing Christian nor for one who researches Christianity more intellectually and academically) -- it is my encounter with you that has shattered, in a sense (in one sense), a simple relationship to the figure of Jesus Christ and through Jesus Christ of the Gospels to God.

You have alerted me to the real facts of the case, that when people resist Christianity in many instances they are showing a personal integrity which rises up in resistance to you (you here should be taken as a type). So, to make a long story shorter, what I am forced to face is exactly what I write about which I do not think you can really understand. And you cannot (really) understand because of the nature of your *faith position*. So then, a 'faith position' must be examined. In your case what I would describe about it is that it is an 'edifice' which functions (as I have said!) like a 'fortress'. The fortress is unassailable. You put it I thought quite accurately when you said "All bullets miss". You have next to no capacity for critical analysis. Now, I would only say that this is a really strange posture to have and a strange one to *live in*.

The clearest and most revealing example, as you know, was that you explained the Genesis story (stories) as literal descriptions. Pages and pages were spent interrogating you about what, in fact, you really think about this story. You roundly avoided becoming honest. You went into an absurd diversion, a blatant sophistical game, about 'original mating pairs' as if to say that this is what Genesis refers to. Finally you proposed buying and reading certain tomes where, you claimed, the truth would be revealed and through which one would be made to understand. In my case, I can't speak of others, you showed me your core deviousness and dishonesty. (As I said I would have the same impression if at some Biblical theme-park in Arkansas the guide proposed to explain, in *rational* terms, how Noah loaded the Earth's animals into the Ark as if this was a description of reality).

Therefore, if you actually believe such things then I must conclude that your *faith position* will set you up to believe any number of different, outrageous & absurd, other things. Yet you continually front yourself as a Master Logician. You refer to Aristotelean predicates and such. In short (as I see it) you perform an absurd theatre where, I gather, you attempt to present your belief-system as one others should take on and, bizarrely, imagine that you really hold some 'higher ground' in rationality that others have fallen away from.

So this leads me to examine, with fresh eyes, the Culture Wars -- and this is really what interests and concerns me, not the forum-games of someone, you, who plays mind-games on the Internet -- where battles rage between those who hold to the faith-position of Christianity (and this is extremely varied and not simply a monolith) and the *surrounding culture* which is in a process of 'going crazy'. There arises a temptation to employ a binary perceptual analysis (the reasons why the culture is going crazy) but this poses another problem: it cannot be examined, nor understood, nor remediated, though binary methods nor binary solutions.

Therefore the problem, if it is possible to speak in this way, is far more complex and, perhaps, far more troubling.

As a system of metaphysical explication the Standard Christian Version is in trouble. I am reasonably sure that you cannot understand a) that this has come about and b) why it has come about and c) what it portends. But all of this I have expressed. The *picture* has been punctured. The *horizon* was in fact erased. No one will succeed in 'painting the images on the sky' again. In a sense this means that the images of the Cave are no longer believed in. But this has to be carefully explained not merely taken on its face. What you do not seem to understand (ensconced as you are in your fortress) is that many people, even if they desired to believe the Story and the Old Picture, simply cannot do so. Not because they are dishonest but because they are honest. And you come along, purporting to be as honest as Jesus Christ is honest, and front yourself through lies, self-deceptions and rhetorical and sophistical shenanigans as you rehearse your evangelical play. How many have you claimed from darkness and back into he bosom of the Lord?

So this is what I think. Yet this does not mean that I 'walk back' a great deal of what I have said about my own relationship to the doctrines of Christianity. Actually something quite different occurred in me. When I realized that Christianity is, indeed, a 'picture' that is presented to the imagination and that through the Picture one is asked to choose an identification, I then had to realize that the desire to gain the *content* that was promised was in no sense unreal or false, but that the picture or the representation is not the crucial thing. But moreover, and here is the important thing, even if The Story collapses (the horizon is erased) it does not mean that the truths behind the stories do not *exist*. They do exist. And they exist as all ideas exist -- as something encountered by man's psyche.

I think this is the bridge too far that most people would have great trouble in crossing.

So I suppose that you can see, even with your encumbered intellect, that what I am talking about extends quite a bit beyond your asinine, binary 'problem' that you suggest is the main problem (for which you have the sole solution I must add). That is, that The Prince of Peace will flutter down eventually and set up offices on Earth and install the Heavenly Bureaucracy.

The actual conversation has to do with The Next Steps. The fact of the matter is that I have been writing about this for months now (in one way or another and through various angles-of-approach).
IC: Again I return to the obvious question, which I cannot help but note, you never even attempt to answer: what part of the Inquisition, the Crusades or the Wars of Religion appeals to you as the sort of thing Christ would require?
The issue of 'power' and 'authority' (this is what I take your questions asked in the quoted portion to resolve down into) is, in fact, a crucial question. And I can only begin by saying that Europe (that is the pre-Christian and pagan Europe of the regions and tribes) was effectively conquered by a Mediterranean power-center. That is the process through which Europe became Europe. These sorts of endeavors -- quintessentially man's endeavors and this does not vary -- always involve power and its use on one hand, and then persuasion-education on the other. The way that I would respond to your question is through a reference to Plato's Seventh Epistle where it is proposed that it is *good* and honorable to topple a political regime (a tyranny is the example Plato refers to) if a better system replaces it. But the entire issue resolves around what is 'better'. And obviously the question is really one about Power and how power is used.

Now you wish for me to resolve this question for you in one terse paragraph or some sort of pious declaration? That is not possible. What I can say (and what I have said!) is that the issue of Power and Authority have to be confronted and examined. It is a far more involved and difficult conversation than is possible to address in simple terms.

When God is pictured -- let's say exclusively -- as a man who thinks and makes decisions, the entire question becomes absurd. Because people on each side of a conflict, a social struggle, an idea-struggle, and ideological struggle, may indeed implore Jesus to intervene. So the question of 'What Christ would require' is somewhat deranged.

However, if the question is shifted away from the personal, and an appeal to a person (who is represented as God), and considered in relation to Logos, at least at that point the conflicts and the struggles have a more reasonable platform.

You make a strange implication: that Jesus Christ, as a God-Man, is out there or up there somewhere like a Cloud Server in the Sky, or as metaphysical referee, sending down impulses to those on his team that he stands behind and cheers on. While on the other side, as is logically necessary, the other team can only be on the side of the Evil One. I mean this is how binary systems function.

I think that we must notice something absurd here. And this is why I say that when the origin and development of Christianity is considered realistically and historically, it has to be looked at as man's decisions made in the face of the Divine, but also in relation to Logos (rational processes and also rational understanding of power-principles).

In any case I'll stop here since all of this is really a topic for a whole other level of conversation (in which you will not be able to participate on almost any level).
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

Alexis Jacobi wrote: Wed May 25, 2022 2:33 pm I know that you desire to keep things on an abstract plane.
Quite the opposite.

I keep trying to bring you down from lofty, vague and uninformative "civilizational" generalities to concrete particulars like, "What do your terms mean?" and "Are you defining things accurately?" You can't get more practical than that.
you, your attitude,
Not relevant to particular claims. And yes, ad hominem.
...the Gospel sources' (which, I should say, could never not be an important process for a believing Christian nor for one who researches Christianity more intellectually and academically)

:D That's about the most absurd thing you could say. It's like a historian saying, "There's no use going back to old events to know what happened." It's just ludicrious, even on the face of it.
The clearest and most revealing example, as you know, was that you explained the Genesis story (stories) as literal descriptions.
That troubles you, does it?

Well, let's set it by, then. You can take the Genesis narrative as a metaphor for something personal and psychological, if you like. Let's talk about what the narrative might tell you about that level of things.
I gather, you attempt to present your belief-system as one others should take on and, bizarrely, imagine that you really hold some 'higher ground' in rationality that others have fallen away from.
It's so much simpler than that. All I'm doing is pointing to the source documents, and saying, "Let's look at what they say, and compare it to what some of the people you imagine are 'Christians' have done with it, and see what's true.

Now, why you fear that process, I can't imagine...except that accurate definitions would shatter your current theory, and you seem afraid to upset it, for some reason. However, theories only improve by being tested; so if you are decided on preserving your theory from testing, then it will get no better than it now is.
How many have you claimed from darkness and back into he bosom of the Lord?
I don't save souls, Alexis. I cannot.

But Christ does and can.
IC: Again I return to the obvious question, which I cannot help but note, you never even attempt to answer: what part of the Inquisition, the Crusades or the Wars of Religion appeals to you as the sort of thing Christ would require?
The issue of 'power' and 'authority' (this is what I take your questions asked in the quoted portion to resolve down into) is, in fact, a crucial question...

No, don't fillibuster again.

Just answer the question. And if you can't, be honest and say so. This is strictly a definitional question: how do you manage to call people "Christian" who do the opposite of what Christ explicitly taught them to do? :shock:
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

AJ: you, your attitude
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed May 25, 2022 3:15 pmNot relevant to particular claims. And yes, ad hominem.
What I wrote was, let's say, a personal anecdote through which I refer to my relationship to a larger, social, cultural problem. And I will say it again: you want to keep things on an abstract plane and not to understand, as fully as is possible, what is going on in the culture as it pertains to the general rejection of Christianity. You gain zero traction as an apologist and, here, you convince no one and you influence no one. This is not an unimportant aspect to what, in general, goes on here. And it also has a great deal of bearing on The Culture Wars going on around us.

Everything depends on how these topics are broached and with what thoughtfulness they are discussed. I say that everything can be brought out and discussed if it is done fairly and maturely.

You refuse to examine the full picture, a fuller picture, because of lack of intellectual integrity. And this is why you have earned for yourself contempt. The more you dig a hole for yourself, the more this becomes plain.
I keep trying to bring you down from lofty, vague and uninformative "civilizational" generalities to concrete particulars like, "What do your terms mean?" and "Are you defining things accurately?" You can't get more practical than that.
First, in order to have any such conversation your transformation from a close-minded, self-indoctrinated, religious fanatic would have to give way to another way of conversing and exchanging ideas. You attempt at every juncture to control the conversation. And you do this through sophistical and tactical trickery.

What my terms mean, what is portended by the changes occurring within the religious spheres -- these are things you cannot examine because of your pose within religious fanaticism. My suggestion is to break out of that box. However, I suspect this is not possible for you because you have established a 'fortress' for yourself.

Is it ad hominem do you think to explain to a man captured by religious fanaticism that he is indeed captured by it? How should one do that? Is there a polite way, do you think? How do you suppose we should speak to a person, let's say, similarly captured by a Marxian CRT posture? There is much more to fanaticism than simply to hold certain ideas.

So, clearly, I make reference to psychological factors. These can be maturely discussed. And in my view this entire area cannot be excluded.
AJ: ...the Gospel sources' (which, I should say, could never not be an important process for a believing Christian nor for one who researches Christianity more intellectually and academically)
IC: That's about the most absurd thing you could say. It's like a historian saying, "There's no use going back to old events to know what happened." It's just ludicrous, even on the face of it.
You seem to have excluded the negative there. For a Christian, and for one researching Christianity, clearly what Christianity was (in the Gospels) could not be excluded.

Read better.
AJ: The clearest and most revealing example, as you know, was that you explained the Genesis story (stories) as literal descriptions.
IC: That troubles you, does it? Well, let's set it by, then. You can take the Genesis narrative as a metaphor for something personal and psychological, if you like. Let's talk about what the narrative might tell you about that level of things.
Here again you are sophistically and deviously making your typical effort to control the narrative by directing it where you wish to. It is a dishonest tactic.

Read what I wrote in those paragraphs, and understand what I explained to you, and respond to it as a whole. If you did that you would at least be edging toward an honest approach.
Just answer the question. And if you can't, be honest and say so. This is strictly a definitional question: how do you manage to call people "Christian" who do the opposite of what Christ explicitly taught them to do?
Here again is your control tactic. I referred to the larger issue in the paragraphs where I expressed my thoughts. Deal with them holistically and honestly. And if you show that you do understand you may get more cooperation from me.

You are fundamentally devious and dishonest. I am not sure if you could be really honest. So this is part of the problem within this conversation. The doctrinal issues, the metaphysical descriptions, are put to the side (for now).
Nick_A
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Re: Christianity

Post by Nick_A »

iambiguous wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 8:54 pm
iambiguous wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 6:46 pm
1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious/spiritual path
Nick_A wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 9:12 pm If you understand why the ONE cannot be proven by discursive thought, you are closer to the truth. God IS while creation follows the process of existence. Can you sense the difference?
I don't know how to make myself any clearer. My interest in the Christian God revolves around the fact that, morally, "I" am "fractured and fragmented" given the arguments I make in the OPs here:

We are all fractured and fragmented. This is the human condition. We are not one with inner unity. We have no I. Rather we are composed of many small i's. We are many. "I Am" is the potential for human being on earth. You have experienced the norm for our being

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296

And given the fact that, existentially, oblivion is more or less right around the corner for me. Christians argue that an objective morality can be embodied if one accepts Jesus Christ as his or her personal savior. And that oblivion is not the fate of "I" at all...that immortality and salvation await those who become faithful Christians.

It isn't a matter of acceptance but experiencing metanoia. Christianity isn't about what we do but rather what we are. A person must experience the need for the Christ and the Holy Spirit.
“People should not worry so much about what they do but rather about what they are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant. If you are righteous, then what you do will also be righteous. We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctified our works.” ― Meister Eckhart, Selected Writings
But: there are many, many, many other folks [here and elsewhere] who insist that if objective morality and immortality and salvation are important to me, it is their God or their spiritual path that will take me there.

Okay, which path is it? Why the Christian path? Where is the demonstrable proof that will win me over to their path?

When you experience metanoia you will experience what Christianity offers.

Go ahead, really, really, really think about it: why has the God not made it abundantly clear to mere mortals how to reach Him? Both before and after they die?

There is no Christian God governing the living machine we call our universe. It is structured on levels of reality and relative consciousness. The higher aids the lower. The higher seeks to help Man but Man as a whole rejects it. Only certain individuals have the need and the courage to open their minds and hearts to experience metanoia.


But, no, straight back up into the spiritual clouds you go...
Nick_A wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 9:12 pm Christianity is not about the ONE or God if you prefer; the source of creation. Christianity is about the Christ and the significance of the Cross within creation. Yet people want to argue about our ineffable source with the discursive mind which is just foolish.
What on Earth does this have to do with demonstrating the existence of the Christian God in Heaven on par with demonstrating the existence of the Pope in the Vatican?

Again what we call the Christian God is just the result of Jewish nationalism imposing the Hebrew God on secular Christianity devolving it into Christendom. If people want to argue over Popes in the Vatican they can. I just don't see why.

Again: With so much at stake!!!

Look, we both know there are any number of folks here who will be more than happy to accommodate you in discussions of the ONE, or discussions of "Christ and the significance of the Cross within creation."

Way, way, way up there in the spiritual clouds.

But I'm not one of them.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

double post
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

Alexis Jacobi wrote: Wed May 25, 2022 4:13 pm
AJ: you, your attitude
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed May 25, 2022 3:15 pmNot relevant to particular claims. And yes, ad hominem.
I will say it again...
And it will not change or improve thereby.
Is it ad hominem do you think to explain to a man captured by religious fanaticism that he is indeed captured by it?
It's irrelevant to the question of the rightness or wrongness of any particular statement he has made. And it's not relevant to the question of whether or not particular propositions he has stated are true or false.

To those things, it's a mere distraction and a filibuster tactic.

You can heap up any petty insults you wish...and you already have. You can be as imperious and dismissive as you can manage. But nothing will make such allegations relevant to the rightness or wrongness of a proposition.

Furthermore, I'm certain you now know that. You could check any definition of ad hominem fallacy, and find out, if you didn't. And if you don't, shame on you for not finding out by now. So I'm going to assume you're intelligent, but that you're simply weaseling at the moment. The alternative, that you're not bright enough to know or find out what ad hominem means, seems untenable.

But even if you were, by way of character, world's worst weasel, that would not tell me whether your particular claims were right or wrong. At least I know that.

Funny that you don't.
AJ: The clearest and most revealing example, as you know, was that you explained the Genesis story (stories) as literal descriptions.
IC: That troubles you, does it? Well, let's set it by, then. You can take the Genesis narrative as a metaphor for something personal and psychological, if you like. Let's talk about what the narrative might tell you about that level of things.
Here again you are sophistically and deviously ...
Off topic. Ad hominem, and not even a bit responsive.

More fillibuster.
Just answer the question. And if you can't, be honest and say so. This is strictly a definitional question: how do you manage to call people "Christian" who do the opposite of what Christ explicitly taught them to do?
Here again is your control tactic.
So...no answer --- just another ad hom and another filibuster.

Have you so little ability to respond to the actual question? Is your theory so weak you can't even raise a tiny defense for it?

It would seem so. Your continual reversion to the ad hominem and to filibusters instead of responsiveness betrays your vulnerability.
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