Christianity

[attofishpi]

Note to others:

Sure, if you wish to engage in further exchanges with attofishpi here, by all means, continue to do so. I'm the first to admit that my reaction to him/her is predicated entirely on my own subjective "rooted in dasein" frame of mind.

I just feel that Philosophy Now can and should sustain exchanges that are considerably more sophisticated and thought provoking than many that I have encountered here.

After all, look at what happened over at ILP!

Well, unless of course I'm wrong. Though God help the Philosophy Now forum if I'm not.

What happened at ILP? Were you so BORING there also that everyone told you to fuck off?

Alas, PN has probably already reached the tipping point. That point where the gap between what we read in the magazine and the level of discourse that some bring to the forum is now so vast as to be irreparable.

It will take a miracle now.

I know, when are you ever going to lift you game and bring something intelligent to say on the PN forum? (however difficult for you)

[Alexis Jacobi]

Harry, this is what I wrote and it was reasonable and lucid:

I was drawn to your assertion: "South Africa, which was itself an exploitative colonial project". From a conventional historical perspective this statement cannot be right. Actually, it requires a specific and a relatively recent perspective in order to confect that statement. It requires an established and a somewhat developed political perspective to *see it in that way*. It requires, then, a type of historical revisionism.

It ‘cannot be right’ because it [SA] was, in a larger vein, the construction of a civilization within a regional context that sought to create something completely different and indeed non-actualizable by any tribal or social group within that region. A colonial project, typically, is a funnel system whereby the resources of the exploited colony are channeled into a fuller leading to a port where they are sent to the mother-country. SA is more comparable to the US which broke the strict colonial (funnel out) model.

South Africa was a complete civilizational unit if I can put it in this way.

The perspective I refer to as ‘recent’ is the view that you seem to hold, and which has a certain purchase on you: it is anti-colonial and often socialistic and communistic in its overall or larger plan. But what I said is that these *projects* borne out of Enlightenment ideology were examined critically by the likes of Evola (one example). I cannot say that I agree with his views on all points but he is lucid and thorough in his critique. The end result of certain manifestations of liberalism and ‘democracy’ seems to be degeneration. Therefore, the critique about Occidental degeneracy is not a vain critique. It is one that is supported by a great deal of coherent ideation.

You *see things* in the way you do because (this is my interpretation) you are an active member of a socialized state. Additionally you are a direct beneficiary. This is not an irrelevant point. Your *ownership interest* (your investment in the system and its tenets) can thusly be examined, fairly and cooly. And in this sense all of our perspectives are open to examination.

Historical revisionism is a ‘lens’ through which the past is judged according to ideals and attitudes defined in the present. It is a reverse-engineering and, I think so at least, leads to bad seeing.

[Walker]

Note to others:

Don't seek refuge in the world*, foolish lad.
That will lead to perdition.


* Unless you talk to the birds, the bees, the flowers and the trees, the world is defined as other folks.

[iambiguous]

What happened at ILP? Were you so BORING there also that everyone told you to fuck off?

Alas, PN has probably already reached the tipping point. That point where the gap between what we read in the magazine and the level of discourse that some bring to the forum is now so vast as to be irreparable.

It will take a miracle now.

I know, when are you ever going to lift you game and bring something intelligent to say on the PN forum? (however difficult for you)

With each new post, the coffin lid gets nailed down...

Fortunately, the magazine itself is still entirely "sophisticated and thought provoking".

[Walker]

Fortunately, the magazine itself is still entirely "sophisticated and thought provoking".

Unfortunately, like the others, it is not one of the Three Jewels.

[attofishpi]

Alas, PN has probably already reached the tipping point. That point where the gap between what we read in the magazine and the level of discourse that some bring to the forum is now so vast as to be irreparable.

It will take a miracle now.

I know, when are you ever going to lift you game and bring something intelligent to say on the PN forum? (however difficult for you)

With each new post, the coffin lid gets nailed down...

Fortunately, the magazine itself is still entirely "sophisticated and thought provoking".

...unlike anything you have ever posted.

** Hey check out the updated:- Quote of the day thread!!

[Walker]

Fortunately, the magazine itself is still entirely "sophisticated and thought provoking".

Unfortunately, like the others, it is not one of the Three Jewels.

... continued:

In the meaning of The Three Jewels, folks are the element that comprise the Sangha.
The folks in the Sangha share the same view. That is the other element.

The folks in a Christian Church share the same view.

The folks to whom you appeal for refuge with your entreaties, do not share the same view.
I know, because no one else is using that word, that is your measure of things.

[iambiguous]

I know, when are you ever going to lift you game and bring something intelligent to say on the PN forum? (however difficult for you)

With each new post, the coffin lid gets nailed down...

Fortunately, the magazine itself is still entirely "sophisticated and thought provoking".

...unlike anything you have ever posted.

** Hey check out the updated:- Quote of the day thread!!

Note to others:

Okay, I promise to end this here.

Let's move on to my four factors above.

[attofishpi]

With each new post, the coffin lid gets nailed down...

Fortunately, the magazine itself is still entirely "sophisticated and thought provoking".

...unlike anything you have ever posted.

** Hey check out the updated:- Quote of the day thread!!

Note to others:

Okay, I promise to end this here.

Let's move on to my four factors above.

Psychologicaly - it is rather interesting that you keep referring to others (ooh iambiguous is REALLY BIG on PHN forum) - everyone is listening to you in total agreement that you are some master of philosophy...u muppet.

[Harry Baird]

What seems more likely to me is that you refuse to even allow the development of a position that requires calmness and tact to bring it out. What you proceeded to do is act to shut it down, not to open it up.

UTTER nonsense. I have given you every opportunity to develop your position, and yet, you still have not done so. [Except: see below re that which you posted while I was drafting this post.]

In my last post, I affirmed that: "I was hoping to inspire you to say something concrete and meaningful. If mine is a revisionist history of South Africa, then what, in your view, is the unrevised history?"

How do you keep a straight face claiming that I am shutting down a conversation when that question quite obviously does the opposite? It was an explicitly open question that you could have answered however you preferred.

Your response to that question?

*Crickets*

It seems that you don't even want an open conversation, just to bitch and moan that one is impossible.

So, to prompt you further, in the further interests of an open conversation: what, exactly, is your concrete and meaningful non-revisionist history of South Africa?

I have no idea, because you still haven't provided it.

Here, the opportunity of an open conversation remains.

Will you take advantage of it or will you continue to complain that it's not possible?

To put that open question to you in other words:

What is revisionist about my position that South Africa was colonised and exploited, and what is the non-revisionist history?

I'm not shutting you or anybody else down, although I will continue to call you out on your disingenuous BS.

I'm giving you every opportunity to provide an answer. Here, again - still - that opportunity is. Right in your hot little hands.

Take it up or quit complaining that you haven't had it.

You finally, though, start to get to the point with this:

I did not say that SA could not be seen as colonial, I meant to say that it cannot be seen exclusively through that lens. SA was founded by Europeans in accord with an existing, and extremely different, organizing system. What I implied, but yes did not flesh out, is that the talk about SA in fair terms requires a more nuanced exposition, as a starting point, than what is possible with the extremely reduced and binary ‘colonialism’ term.

Here's your opportunity to flesh out that more "nuanced" exposition then. Go on and take it up if you care to. If not, quit lying about not having been given the opportunity.

Yes, though, the stark truth of colonialism is reductive and binary: the stronger took whatever the hell they liked from the weaker, oppressing them as a matter of course.

So to describe a world that has been substantially created by colonial projects requires not a brute judgmentalism — so predictable, so reductive, so typical of the Left-Progressive perspectives and hurling of moral blame — but a different and a fuller perspective.

Again: go ahead and provide us with that different and fuller perspective rather than railing about being inhibited from doing so. Nobody's stopping you. I don't even have the power to stop you: I'm not a moderator of this forum nor have I ever even corresponded with a moderator.

I am not stopping you from expressing yourself, dude. Say whatever it is that you have to say. Just don't expect me to agree with you. It's pretty clear I won't.

Ah, but, curiously, I see that while I have been composing this reply, you have had more to say. Great. You have found the courage to be more explicit. Here's the relevant extract from your post:

It ‘cannot be right’ because it [SA] was, in a larger vein, the construction of a civilization within a regional context that sought to create something completely different and indeed non-actualizable by any tribal or social group within that region. A colonial project, typically, is a funnel system whereby the resources of the exploited colony are channeled into a fuller leading to a port where they are sent to the mother-country. SA is more comparable to the US which broke the strict colonial (funnel out) model.

South Africa was a complete civilizational unit if I can put it in this way.

Oh boy. So, your claim is that South Africa was not a colony because it was not - so you say - a "funnel out system" but was instead a "complete civilizational unit".

Whatever the hell it is you mean by a "complete civilizational unit" is anybody's guess, but here are two facts:

Firstly, the tribes in South Africa were already civilised. They had no need of help from Europeans to build those "units" of civilisation, let alone "complete" ones, whatever the distinction is.

Secondly, Europeans waltzed into those black people's southern lands, set up colonies, and exploited them not because they wanted to benefit the native population, let alone to altruistically set up "civilizational units", but because they were in it for themselves and what they could get out of the natives and their land.

You surely know all of this, so your protestations are clearly disingenuous.

[Harry Baird]

P.S. Europeans were free to "seek to create something completely different and indeed non-actualizable by any tribal or social group within that region". What they were not free to do was to IMPOSE it involuntarily upon the tribes and social groups within that region.

[iambiguous]

Does God Exist?
William Lane Craig says there are good reasons for thinking that He does.

Of course, highly speculative physical scenarios, such as loop quantum gravity models, string models, even closed timelike curves, have been proposed to try to avoid this absolute beginning. These models are fraught with problems, but the bottom line is that none of these theories, even if true, succeeds in restoring an eternal past for the universe.

That's not the point though. What's crucial is that within the astrophysicist community itself the "scientific method" is used in order to attempt to establish if the universe came into existence out of nothing at all or has always been around. There's no equivalent of the Book of Genesis for them, is there? To go to one or another Bible and merely accept that the Creation account in it must be true because it is the Word of God?

Isn't that basically what the Christians here fall back on? Immanual Can's own entirely circular "logic": God exists because it says so in the Bible. The Bible is true because it is the Word of God.

Last year, at a conference in Cambridge celebrating the seventieth birthday of Stephen Hawking, Vilenkin delivered a paper entitled ‘Did the Universe Have a Beginning?’, which surveyed current cosmology with respect to that question. He argued that “none of these scenarios can actually be past-eternal.” Specifically, Vilenkin closed the door on three models attempting to avert the implication of his theorem: eternal inflation, a cyclic universe, and an ‘emergent’ universe which exists for eternity as a static seed before expanding. Vilenkin concluded, “ All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”

Okay, all well and good.

So, we should be able to link to the various media in the scientific community and note where, finally, once and for all, all astrophysicists are not only in agreement that the universe had an absolute beginning but that there can be little doubt that this beginning is attributable to God.

And then those like Immanuel Can can take it up from there here. Providing us with rock-solid evidence that it was the Christian God who created existence as we know it Himself. Explaining further how His own existence is the one exception. That in fact He Himself has always been around.

The math alone confirms it.

[attofishpi]

P.S. Europeans were free to "seek to create something completely different and indeed non-actualizable by any tribal or social group within that region". What they were not free to do was to IMPOSE it involuntarily upon the tribes and social groups within that region.

You must realise that it's not like ALL the people of a nation\continent get together to do nasty stuff eh?

If that was the case, then you Harry, right now ARE Australia, what are you going to do?

[Harry Baird]

Taking up a few other points:

I generally overlook insults on a forum like this but it is harder when you know someone and a basic respect had been, or should have been established.

They weren't insults. They were cold, hard analysis of the power game you were playing. Yes, one would hope to avoid that sort of thing in established friendships, but then, one would also hope that one's friends didn't play such power games, especially in public.

The reason you feel you can insult freely and without consequence is an area, but not the sole area, that interests me.

The first insult was slung by you: that the position of those such as myself on South Africa is irrational and emotional. You are on the high horse here, my friend.

You had no intention that I can see to *inspire* me and I call you out on a lie. Are you aware that this is not truthful?

It was a mere turn of phrase. If it's more comfortable for you, substitute "provoke" or "prompt".

It is also ‘cheap and easy’ to imply that your opponent’s arguments are (as you have essentially said) in bad-faith. Gaslighting, Two-bit hustling. That sort of thing. What gives you this right? Can you explain this to me? And what if I repaid you in kind? What would happen in this conversation? What possible use would this serve?

You seem to be getting a little emotional here, AJ. Maybe even a little, dare I suggest, angry. I, in turn, am being very serious and rational. That's the right choice on my part, I understand.

[Harry Baird]

You must realise that it's not like ALL the people of a nation\continent get together to do nasty stuff eh?

I get it. That doesn't absolve those who do.