Christianity

[seeds]

The tendency on forums like this is that people take up a position behind the barricade of a given position and then engage in the endless bicker-wars. But I find it much more interesting to try to see into our specific 'formations' (what has informed our opinions and ideas and why).

So then, if you are against "bicker-wars" and are truly interested in trying to understand what has informed our opinions and ideas, do you think that provocative comments such as this...

Now in regard to the kerfuffle as you have charmingly termed it, my suggestion is that you and Seeds should help the Vegetable Taxidemist to properly sing Kumbaya. Yes, you heard me right! You and Seeds never really sung it right and properly, and I have strong doubts that the Taxidermist ever did even try to sing it. You must hit all those notes! Since it refer to *my Lord* I am assuming Immanuel can get on board with this. So a peyote session where you man the didgeridoo (if you are not adept enough bring your Aboriginal neighbor!) and Seeds handles the psychedelic post-Christian chanting is where things need to go now.

...is going to promote an air of mutual respect and cooperation and thus aid you in your quest for understanding?

Are those words a sort of self-fulfilling of your earlier prophecy...

Hoo-boy. Things are gonna get hot around here . . .

...

It is true, and I do not conceal it, that at this present moment I do entertain ideas that are condemned and vilified in the present dispensation.

In a "nutshell" (as in condensed form, please) what are the vilified ideas that you are presently entertaining? Please be specific.

And by "entertaining," does that mean that you consider these condemned and vilified ideas as having merit and value?
_______

[iambiguous]

You seem to have cornered the market on derisively scornful and vitriolic posts insulting other PN members, and, although I've made a few forays into that market myself, I thought I should perhaps develop my own "signature act".

Not far removed from my own reaction to vegetariantaxidermy on another thread:

Indeed, what, in my opinion, is always most intriguing about these at times "arrogant, autocratic, authoritarian" pontificators is not what they argue but the way they bully those who dare not to share their own insufferable dogmas.

So, perhaps, someday she might finally confront whatever or whoever turned her into this Satyrean caricature. Something has clearly pissed her off in life. Something that brings her into places like this in order to vent. And to accumulate scapegoats.

It seems [to me] that she needs to make scapegoats of those she construes to be part of whatever she is outraged about. But what is it? And how did it come about?

Wouldn't that be far more fascinating to explore?

All I can do is to wait and see if she is willing to go there.

On the other hand, being a hardcore polemicist myself, I often provoke others as well. But that's often because I respect their intelligence and provocative exchanges can actually bring that out all the more.

Not at all sure what her own "huffing and puffing" is about.

That all seems fair. You know what, though? I feel a strange kind of affection for VT given her consistency. She's never afraid to GO THERE and mercilessly diss some poor soul, and nor does she ever forego an opportunity to DO *exactly that*. You sort of know what you're getting with her. It's kind of endearing, 'cos she's just doin' what she does - and it's nothing personal, even when it is. She chews us all up and spits us all out, despising the taste of all of us equally. Does that make any sort of sense? And are ya hearin' me, VT? Have a bloody go at me. Tell me how disgustingly condescending I'm being by talking about you in front of yourself like this! Snap your fearsome talons upon my scalp and carry me off to your fiery chambers of torture!

Yep. But my own "thing" here revolves less around what objectivists of her ilk post [about Christianity or any other set of value judgments] and more around exploring how, given the manner in which their lives unfolded existentially [out in a particular world understood in a particular way] they came to think and to believe what they insist that all others must think and to believe as well. In other words, if they wish to be thought of as rational and virtuous human beings. Like they are.

Philosophically, my own "personal prejudice" as it were.

She'll either go there or she won't. Most objectivists won't, however, in my view, because what if my own arguments begin to sink in? What if they begin to suspect that their own comforting and consoling "sense of identity" in regard to moral and political and spiritual convictions are just "existential contraptions" rooted subjectively in dasein in turn?

[iambiguous]

Did John Calvin Believe in Free Will?
MATTHEW BARRETT at the TGC website

Two Calvinists strike up a conversation, and I just happen to be nearby. As they express their love for the doctrines of grace, I then hear them describe the difference between, say, Calvin and Arminius: the former rejected free will and the latter heralded free will. Though they don’t know it yet, pitching the long-standing debate this way leaves them open to the all-too-common objection that we are just a bunch of robots. Maybe it is time for the eavesdropper to speak up.

No, really, what is the existential relationship between Calvinism and the fate of your very own eternal soul?

"Are you familiar with Calvinist doctrine? At its heart is the concept of predestination. Calvinists believe that, at the beginning of time, God selected a limited number of souls to grant salvation and there's nothing any individual person can do during their mortal life to alter their eternal fate."

Okay, the concept of Calvinism. But what about the nitty-gritty existential reality of your very own soul either nestled blissfully for all of eternity in Salvation or writhing in agony the very embodiment of Damnation?

Is it really possible that the God of Abraham has in fact already selected a handful of us to reside in Heaven with Him forever and ever while the rest -- including the most fervent defenders of Christianity here -- are already doomed to Hell? Period. Judgment Day for each of us only as it has always ever been fated/destined to be?

What to make of this, right?

Now you know Arminius was not a contemporary of Calvin. But hold on a minute, Calvin did have plenty of nemeses, and one of them would take up Calvin on issues that would, later on, put Arminius in hot water with his Reformed counterparts. The man’s name was Albertus Pighius, a Dutch Roman Catholic scholar.

You may be aware of Martin Luther’s famous work The Bondage of the Will, a must read for every Christian. But many forget that Calvin wrote a book with a similar title: The Bondage and Liberation of the Will (though it is his subtitle that gets down to the nitty-gritty: A Defense of the Orthodox Doctrine of Human Choice Against Pighius).

Now here of course we get into the historical accounts of Christianity. Jesus Christ [man or myth] arrives on Earth, is crucified, dies for our sins.

Then [historically] all those flesh and blood human beings putting together this while rejecting that in constructing one or another rendition of the Christian Bible.

Calvin then becoming just one of those to put his own rooted existentially in dasein stamp on it all.

God, the determinist.

While there is much we could say about the Calvin-Pighius boxing match, I want to ask a question that may seem, well, obvious: Did Calvin believe in free will? By looking at Calvin’s Institutes, as well as his debate with Pighius, we discover that this question is not so easily answered as one might have assumed.

Seriously, how could someone convince himself that whether he lived his life, say, embracing Hitler or doing everything in his power to defeat him, it was all entirely moot. His fate was decided by God right from the start.

Or is Calvinism just one more frame of mind such that it doesn't matter what your fate is as long as you are able to convince yourself it was all "beyond my control...so don't blame me."

[Alexis Jacobi]

The tendency on forums like this is that people take up a position behind the barricade of a given position and then engage in the endless bicker-wars. But I find it much more interesting to try to see into our specific 'formations' (what has informed our opinions and ideas and why).

So then, if you are against "bicker-wars" and are truly interested in trying to understand what has informed our opinions and ideas, do you think that provocative comments such as this...

Now in regard to the kerfuffle as you have charmingly termed it, my suggestion is that you and Seeds should help the Vegetable Taxidemist to properly sing Kumbaya. Yes, you heard me right! You and Seeds never really sung it right and properly, and I have strong doubts that the Taxidermist ever did even try to sing it. You must hit all those notes! Since it refer to *my Lord* I am assuming Immanuel can get on board with this. So a peyote session where you man the didgeridoo (if you are not adept enough bring your Aboriginal neighbor!) and Seeds handles the psychedelic post-Christian chanting is where things need to go now.

...is going to promote an air of mutual respect and cooperation and thus aid you in your quest for understanding?

One thing that we must never lose sight of is our sense of humor. In my view it is entirely fair to use humor, even acidic humor, but it always has to be carried out with a sort of lightness of heart.

I am not sure if what I am after is mutual respect and cooperation, in any case I would not have used that phrasing. What I think is that there are irreconcilable differences that cannot be bridged, and will not be bridged, and yet it is still possible to carry on in such a way that a productive conversation takes shape. Since there are differences that will not be bridged, and yet we are here, we should destroy the other's position artfully. What other way to pass the time is there?

But shall I *interpret* and *translate* my humorous blurb? It is a re-statement of things I've already been saying:

I see you and Brother Harry as having internalized the Christian ethic. The ghost of Jesus has evaporated -- poof! -- but yet there still hang in the air the Moral Song like the smile of the Cheshire Cat. Harry goes into romantic-emotional transports over the terrible things that have been to Aboriginals and other victims ("someone's crying my Lord...") and you have identified a Satan who should have, but didn't, receive that bolt of punishing lightening in the form of Donald Trump. You have presented the forum with what I call *an emblem* of the detested lower-frequency evil that needs to be 'overcome'. I've peppered some of my comments with references to psychedelic mushrooms because, I have gathered, you've been enlightened by entheogens. It is part of your larger discourse, is it not?

Cranky Vegetarian Taxidermist will have none of any of this! If you defend Social Justice you identify yourself as woke, and woke is non-good and ridiculizable. But if you defend something that should not be defended (I got whacked because I pointed out that Gregory and Travis McMichael, convected for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, were acting nominally in accord with a law on the books in Georgia) ten tons of abuse will fall upon you.

"What's the fucking matter with you?" she bellowed, haranguing me because I was not seeing correctly The Truth. [I do not think those men were convicted by Justice, I think they were convicted by Revenge and I would develop this perspective by reference to a Kafka story In The Penal Colony which is an amazingly brilliant rephrasing of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals). That whole enactment of Justice was not that at all. It was something else and something else (nearly) entirely.]

Is it improper, on a philosophy forum, that I point out that her reasonings, though they feel so genuine, so 'true', can still be examined critically and possibly, just possibly, seen differently? True, I do so through a humorous avenue but I do not think I am overtly insulting her (or anyone). If anyone needs to sing Kumbaya, and really get lost in the part, it is Vegetarian Taxidermist! Presently, her songs are completely discordant. Indeed they really have no musicality at all.

I only referenced Immanuel Can indirectly -- he who handles & wields the Surrogate of God he calls Jesus. A really rather brutal ventriloquy and fable-raising. He its into the character, as it were, of those who cling to a vanished god-concept and demand belief or else. And he is ultra-convinced of the veracity and the real existence of his Surrogate.

So am I behaving so wrong? Can't I have a bit of fun and try at the same time to 'speak truth'?

[Alexis Jacobi]

In a "nutshell" (as in condensed form, please) what are the vilified ideas that you are presently entertaining? Please be specific.

And by "entertaining," does that mean that you consider these condemned and vilified ideas as having merit and value?

If you present, in a list form, what you believe are the favored ideas that inform modern liberalism, then I will make an effort to cooperate with your inquiry.

My full statement was the following. Was that not enough as a starting point?

So with that said I more or less put the majority of my cards on the table and say that the freedom to explore ideas that are contradictory to those of the present dispensation is my *project*. There is no area that I have not devoted some time and energy to. Not by reading what others say about those who have contrary ideas but by reading primary sources. One primary area, after reading Richard Weaver, was an independent analysis of the War Between the States (American Civil War) and I do go along with the better term The War of Northern Aggression. I do not accept the Party Line. I do not accept then the very foundation of the American (federally mediated) Civil Religion. I do say that this war, and everything that ramified from it, cannot else but be considered as one examines the present political and social situation in the US today. So, as you can well imagine I am immediately placed by my own views in a controversial position. "What does this mean?" someone will ask (and must ask). It has to be explained of course, but note the following: in today's climate it is more common to shut down conversations than to open them up. Do I have to cite references? Shutting down conferences, stopping certain speakers from speaking, banning and censorship, and the vilification of ideas that are not liked and described as *bad* or *evil* is the order of the day.

[henry quirk]

The War of Northern Aggression

excerpt from On the Militia Part 2 by D. McKenzie Smith

President Lincoln, contrary to some of his statements, committed treason against citizens in at least three ways.

1. He jailed people, particularly publishers and journalists, for not supporting his war efforts.

2. He disregarded due process, which requires that people be charged with a crime, and that the crime be proven in court.

3. He also disregarded Habeas Corpus, which requires officials to prove that they have arrested a citizen for legitimate reasons.

Not only was Lincoln not removed from office and prosecuted, most soldiers and police 'followed orders', joining in the president's crimes. This is one of the main reasons the founders, and freedom minded people generally, resist each new federal incursion on people and their rights.

Please note that, during the 'civil' war, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was advised to do as Lincoln had done in the north; jail anyone who did not support the war. But he refused, stating that one of the reasons for leaving the U. S. was abuse of power by federal authorities. Some historians claim that one reason the South failed to win that war was because President Davis and the war effort were hampered by some very vocal critics.

Lincoln also committed treason against the States. We will next look at the issue of secession.

There is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits or even hints that a State may not leave the union. During the War of 1812, several States considered leaving the nation. The New England States got together in Hartford at a convention to decide if all of the New England States would secede together! New York refused to allow its militia to be used in a planned invasion of Canada, as New York considered that to be invading a neighboring nation. This was back in a time when the States remembered that they were sovereign on many issues.

The southern States seceded individually, and then formed the Confederacy. They joined voluntarily, and they left voluntarily. They departed peacefully. It was provocations by Lincoln that caused the shooting war to start at Ft. Sumpter. Carolina reasoned that no outside nation could keep a fort in a Carolina harbor. All of the southern States saw themselves as defending themselves against invasion.

If the northern States, or at least some of them, had refused to send their militia troops for federal use against the South, there never would have been a 'civil' war.

The 'civil' war remains the most deadly war the U. S. has ever been involved in. Thomas Dilorenzo, in his book 'The Real Lincoln', made the case that the war was Lincoln's personal decision, and Lincoln encouraged the most savage treatment of the citizenry, against all applicable 'rules of war' for the time.

By the 1860's, the U. S. federal government had already become tyrannical. It just had not created a federal standing army...yet.

[seeds]

In a "nutshell" (as in condensed form, please) what are the vilified ideas that you are presently entertaining? Please be specific.

And by "entertaining," does that mean that you consider these condemned and vilified ideas as having merit and value?

If you present, in a list form, what you believe are the favored ideas that inform modern liberalism, then I will make an effort to cooperate with your inquiry.

Not so fast there, A.J., for you were the one who stated:

It is true, and I do not conceal it, that at this present moment I do entertain ideas that are condemned and vilified in the present dispensation.

So now I'm supposed to give you a list of the condemned and vilified ideas that you entertain?

Nice try, but that's not how it works (though I do see that you did reference a few things in this next quote...

My full statement was the following. Was that not enough as a starting point?...

...Do I have to cite references? Shutting down conferences, stopping certain speakers from speaking, banning and censorship, and the vilification of ideas that are not liked and described as *bad* or *evil* is the order of the day.

Who here hasn't wished that time travel was possible so that someone could go back in time and stop (strangle) certain speakers (such as Hitler, for example) before they had a chance to spread their vile philosophy that facilitated the horrible outcomes they are famous for?

So, clearly, in some instances, banning, censorship, and the vilification of certain ideas does humanity a favor (though the favor may go unrecognized).

In other words, sometimes the "adults" of the world need to try and shield ignorant and extremely gullible "children"...

(such as this guy, for example - https://youtu.be/AyN34sFko9w)

...from harmful, power-hungry (sociopathic) influencers who truly don't know right from wrong (Trump, for example).

Again, Alexis, look at the guy in the YouTube link I provided and tell me it's not a good thing to prevent him...

(and the millions like him; some of which seem to be members of this very forum)

...from being subjected to hate speech.
_______

[Alexis Jacobi]

Not so fast there, A.J., for you were the one who stated:

It is true, and I do not conceal it, that at this present moment I do entertain ideas that are condemned and vilified in the present dispensation.

So now I'm supposed to give you a list of the condemned and vilified ideas that you entertain?

Nice try, but that's not how it works

To get from me you have to give. Reciprocity is a basic virtue. So, if you don’t mind, it does work that way. Though I make no demands on you.

Give it a shot. It won’t kill you …

[Harry Baird]

If you present, in a list form, what you believe are the favored ideas that inform modern liberalism, then I will make an effort to cooperate with your inquiry.

[...]
So now I'm supposed to give you a list of the condemned and vilified ideas that you entertain?

Just briefly before other potential responses, I think there's been a slight misunderstanding here. Seeds, I think AJ is asking you not for a list of the ideas that he entertains (as you seem to have misinterpreted him as doing), but of those favoured by modern liberalism ("wokism", in other words, I guess).

In this respect, AJ is not identifying as a modern liberal (and definitely not as a "wokie"), although at other times he *does* seems to self-identify as a liberal in some sense(s), so it's a bit murky here.

AJ, please correct me if this clarification is misguided.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Thou hast seen & spoken truly, Brother Harry!

[vegetariantaxidermy]

If you present, in a list form, what you believe are the favored ideas that inform modern liberalism, then I will make an effort to cooperate with your inquiry.

[...]
So now I'm supposed to give you a list of the condemned and vilified ideas that you entertain?

Just briefly before other potential responses, I think there's been a slight misunderstanding here. Seeds, I think AJ is asking you not for a list of the ideas that he entertains (as you seem to have misinterpreted him as doing), but of those favoured by modern liberalism ("wokism", in other words, I guess).

In this respect, AJ is not identifying as a modern liberal (and definitely not as a "wokie"), although at other times he *does* seems to self-identify as a liberal in some sense(s), so it's a bit murky here.

AJ, please correct me if this clarification is misguided.

Wokies and people who are liberal are two diffent things. Why does that seem to be impossible for people to grasp? The same people who call wokies 'liberals' are the same morons who label anyone who leans to the left (which happens to be the most logical and rational position) as 'woke'. Lazy, shallow bullshit that shows a total absence of critical thinking skills. You might as well say that everyone who votes 'conservative' is a white supremacist KKK member, but even that is probably not as stupid, because wokies are the opposite of liberal in the sense that they despise free speech and demand 'respect' for being the chosen ones who are the moral standard-bearers for everyone (and woe betide anyone who strays from their very narrow and rigid set of 'moral' rules and world view). Simply not being racist/bigoted isn't good enough for wokies. You have to be 'non racist/bigoted' in EXACTLY the same way as they are 'allegedly' non racist, which means using exactly the same language and following their own strict rules about how to use language and even how to think.
What the fuck does 'modern liberal' mean? 'A person who isn't liberal'???

[Alexis Jacobi]

She has some good points there.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

American right wing religious fuckturds are more than happy to spread the bullshit that 'left=wokie' because it's a way of completely undermining and sabotaging the left-leaning political parties (which have, in turn, been hijacked and undermined by wokism. So there is really no hope for the world).

[Harry Baird]

I am not recommending apartheid nor that it be reestablished.

What, then, are you recommending?

And I talk about the revolution in South Africa as a 'success' and as a 'gain' for the liberal world order that so strongly (globally) came out against the SA regime and in favor of the negotiated settlement in the early 1990's. What interests me, and what I always write about, is the issue of degeneration that, in my view, arises simultaneously with these *successes*.

Elaborate on this, please. What are the manifestations of this degeneration, and what more specifically are its causes?

It is true, and I do not conceal it, that at this present moment I do entertain ideas that are condemned and vilified in the present dispensation.

Had seeds not asked what he'd asked here, I would have.

Does liberalism then eventually result in rot? What does 'rot' mean? If there is such a thing as 'rot' what then countervails against it?

As you well know -- having read Weaver -- people have dedicated their lives to coming up with substantial answers to that, and those, questions.

It'd be useful to get your own answers to those questions.

Now in regard to the kerfuffle as you have charmingly termed it, my suggestion is that you and Seeds should help the Vegetable Taxidemist to properly sing Kumbaya. Yes, you heard me right! You and Seeds never really sung it right and properly, and I have strong doubts that the Taxidermist ever did even try to sing it. You must hit all those notes! Since it refer to *my Lord* I am assuming Immanuel can get on board with this. So a peyote session where you man the didgeridoo (if you are not adept enough bring your Aboriginal neighbor!) and Seeds handles the psychedelic post-Christian chanting is where things need to go now. I'd say it is ordained by the Time itself or, to put it somewhat better, by Dasein itself. Let Dasein therefore enter into the very fibres of your body in a fiery Pentecostal spirit-possession of sheer conviction! Clear your throats now! Sing!

I think we have to sort of coax VT and lead her gradually to the right notes. I suspect we might have to meet her at her starting point somewhere around here.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

I think we have to sort of coax VT and lead her gradually to the right notes. I suspect we might have to meet her at her starting point somewhere around here.

Actually I have perfect pitch, so you are barking up the wrong tree there. How's that canoe-building going? You can't be using aboriginal resources so you will need to build it out of your own shit (which shouldn't take too long).