Christianity

[Lacewing]

I do not know how to describe 'radical activists in our present', except to note that they exist. These people exist, they are active today -- that is all I know.

I am uncertain how to categorize those people who seem to struggle to defend the categories of concern through which they identify themselves, what they value, and what they fight for.

You've used the word 'liberal' before, so it appeared to me that you have ideas/opinions/thoughts about who/what they primarily are.

I notice (or believe that I notice) that you often ask the same question, with different inflections. For example:

So how much are you willing to look at and consider beyond what you've said, or does your focus/conclusion represent the only value you see?

My response is: How can I answer the question if I am uncertain what (loosely or precisely) you are referring to?

Hmm, well, I've said quite a lot to provide context. We all have views we want to share here, often ALONG WITH certain conclusions we've come to. What about considering MORE than those conclusions? What about questioning what we think we know the full extent of? And who we think the characters are? And who the 'enemy' is? Are we willing to question our own hard-built/hard-fought views? Does that seem unfathomable or ridiculous? If so, why?

Imagine a room filled with 100 people, each absolutely certain of and committed to their various opposing views/conclusions for achieving and living their values... and each finds it unfathomable to consider anything otherwise. What is the path forward for them individually and as a group? I feel it's valuable to ask, can each step off their position just a few steps to see what else there might be worth considering. Might a slightly broader view bring more understanding... or even more peace and love? Is there a fear that the broader view will invalidate the previously hard-built view? Why would that be a bad thing if it's just 'more truth'?

These are my philosophical questions. Do I really need to be more specific somehow?

When you say: "if people would stop being so polarized and think about what's reasonable for the diversity of people and life involved" I would suggest that you are suggesting a line of action, and that you are expressing a value-assessment of your own. So I would point out that you are, to use a term that I use, *inserting* a value-recommendation about right and good ethical actions.

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

Are these not reasonable questions for a philosophy forum?

What is likely to result from the value-assertions that we hold and subscribe to when they are applied (through paideia) to the world-at-large.

I think we have to get out of our own way. If we are servants of our structures, those structures can become our 'drivers' over (moreso than) our values. Values don't need a specific structure. The world-at-large can have very similar values, but we are ruled by so many other things. I think we each have to be willing to look beyond the structures to see what more is worth considering -- perhaps to lighten-up on the structure so that the value becomes more important -- and then keep doing more of that.

[henry quirk]

Imagine a room filled with 100 people

imagine just two

stan recognizes he's free (self-directing, -responsible, -reliant)

stan recognizes lou, the other guy, is also free, and believes lou returns the favor

lou, though, doesn't see stan as free: he sees stan as resource, potential property

stan is willin' to work with lou to meet common goals; he gets that he and lou aren't gonna see eye to eye on many, mebbe even most things, but he knows as long as each recognizes the other as free, then differences can be worked thru

lou, havin' only one goal, will never work with stan, cuz he wants to own him; stan is meat: anything, everything, he does is expressly done with that in mind

simplistic as it is, this scenario describes pretty well the circumstance man has been in since before he fell out of the trees

you want us to broaden; me, I just want you to see

[Immanuel Can]

Immanuel Can wrote:

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 3:35 pm
In a nutshell my view is that the notion of *a Christian nation* is an impossibility.

This may surprise you, but so is mine.

I don't think for an instant there's ever been such a thing as "a Christian nation," and I don't for a second suppose we're going to create one now.

There was a very close unity between Christianity and secular power in the late middle ages in Europe west of Constantinople.

Nope. Catholicism. (And in Constantinople, Eastern Orthodoxy, of course.)

The papacy

Catholic.

It's even a joke:

Person A: "Did Joe Biden cheat in the election?"

Person B: "Is the Pope Catholic?"

[Lacewing]

Imagine a room filled with 100 people

imagine just two...

...simplistic as it is, this scenario describes pretty well the circumstance man has been in since before he fell out of the trees

Okay. So? What's your point?

you want us to broaden; me, I just want you to see

What do you think I don't see, Henry?

[Janoah]

You can proceed from the assumption that matter did not created, but has always been, and will always be.
At this stage, scientists cannot prove it unequivocally, but they cannot refute it unequivocally either.

I honestly don't know what you would be able to point to in order to contest it.

I have already pointed out that in the big bang theory there is no creation out of nothing. Existing matter explodes. And if there is matter, then there is regularity to which it obeys.
As for mathematics, as I have already said, there is no time parameter in it at all.
On the account of the "heat death of the universe", I, too, have already indicated that there is a scientific refutation of it. There is no definite proof that it will be, and there is no definite proof that it will not.
"Max Planck wrote that the phrase "entropy of the universe" has no meaning because it admits of no accurate definition." Etc

But unfortunately, you did not understand the main thing in my words, but about the uncaused cause.

[Immanuel Can]

You can proceed from the assumption that matter did not created, but has always been, and will always be.
At this stage, scientists cannot prove it unequivocally, but they cannot refute it unequivocally either.

I honestly don't know what you would be able to point to in order to contest it.

I have already pointed out that in the big bang theory there is no creation out of nothing. Existing matter explodes.

But you've missed the problem in your own explanation. Is that "existing matter" a product of cause and effect, or not? If it is, then the chain of cause and effect continues...and cannot be regressively eternal, because such a chain can never start, having no starting point. If it is not, then you have to imagine that the "existing matter" is itself eternal. But we can see, empirically, that matter is not eternal. It declines from ordered states into less ordered states, and eventually into an equal soup of energy particles...which is what is meant by "heat death." And empirically, and all things remaining as they are, all the matter in the universe will end up in heat death in approximately 1-100 trillion years...long after the Earth itself has ceased to exist.

But unless something incredibly powerful and different from anything else we know in the material world, something that has not yet intervened intervenes, that's where it's all going.

As for mathematics, as I have already said, there is no time parameter in it at all.

You've mistaken the case: there is no such problem. Mathematics can be used to describe time, but mathematics is not time-dependent itself. Yesterday, 2 was 2. Today, a 2 is a 2. Tomorrow, 2 will still be 2. Mathematics has an adjectival relation to matter. It is not itself "matter." It describes the quantity of a given entity.

[henry quirk]

Okay. So? What's your point?

What do you think I don't see, Henry?

I think you're so caught up in broadening and detaching you don't see that most folks do quite well cooperatin' (even when they have radically different views). I think you don't see the essential problem (which isn't narrow perspective or attachment to specific notions) is -- as I've said 5000 times (by your count) -- the *perpetual conflict between free men and (and I hate to say it cuz it rankles so many) slavers.

You focus on all the wrong divisions (which aren't divisions at all but only differences) and ignore the one true division.

Frankly, I think Alexis does the same thing. He's lookin' for the tap root, but, thru at least part of his conversations with Mannie and you, keeps settlin' for the subsidiaries.




*which is part of a deeper, larger conflict (good vs evil, or [if you prefer] life vs death or even negentropy vs entropy)

[Janoah]

I honestly don't know what you would be able to point to in order to contest it.

I have already pointed out that in the big bang theory there is no creation out of nothing. Existing matter explodes.

by "heat death."

I just now gave you a link about the scientific refutation of the "heat death of the universe". Can you read my answer before answering?

There is no single causal chain in nature. There is a regularity of nature, which exists if there is matter.
There is no scientific refutation of the eternity of matter.
If you are aware of such a rebuttal, please provide a link to a scientific rebuttal (not fantasy).

"Yesterday" - is not mathematics, it is physics that can use mathematics.
There is no in physics, which uses the mathematics of the impossibility of eternity.

[Immanuel Can]

I have already pointed out that in the big bang theory there is no creation out of nothing. Existing matter explodes.

by "heat death."

I just now gave you a link about the scientific refutation of the "heat death of the universe".

You misunderstand. "Heat death" isn't the problem with your theory.

Mathematics is.

There is no such thing as an infinite regression of prerequisites. If you understand that simple point, then it's that you have to have an answer for.

Let's focus on what matters to the argument, not that which is secondary or tangential to it.

There is no scientific refutation of the eternity of matter.

Yes, there is. I gave it to you. But you ignored it. So I can't beat that strategy.

[Janoah]

There is no such thing as an infinite regression of prerequisites.

Give proof that an infinite regression of prerequisites is not possible.

There is no scientific refutation of the eternity of matter.

Yes, there is. I gave it to you. But you ignored it.

Provide a link proving ("heat death of the universe" is not proven).

[henry quirk]

Give proof that an infinite regression of prerequisites is not possible.

...translation...

give proof that unicorns don't exist

[Immanuel Can]

There is no such thing as an infinite regression of prerequisites.

Give proof that an infinite regression of prerequisites is not possible.

Easy. So easy.

Here's an experiment demonstrating it.

Get yourself a piece of paper.

On it, write "0"

But before you write "0", this experiment requires you first have to have already written "-1."

But before you write "-1", you have to already have written "-2".

And before that, you already have to have written "-3", "-4", "-5," and so on, back to infinity.

That models an infinite regress of causes, because each integer is a prerequisite for the next one, just like each cause in an infinite regress is the prerequisite of the effect associated with it.

So just sit down with some paper, and try to do it.

And then respond as soon as you've managed to write "0," or when you realize the truth: that there will never come a point when you can write even a single integer, let alone reach the "0" point (i.e. the present).

And just as you can never start writing, so too a universe can never begin if it requires an infinite chain of causes.

There is no scientific refutation of the eternity of matter.

Yes, there is. I gave it to you. But you ignored it.

Provide a link proving ("heat death of the universe" is not proven).

As I said, you can, if you wish, try to ignore what scientists say about heat death. It won't change the problem. So there's nothing won or lost on the question of heat death. So let's not waste our time on things not required for the objection to hold.

[henry quirk]

Here's an experiment demonstrating it.

Get yourself a piece of paper.

On it, write "0"

But before you write "0", this experiment requires you first have to have already written "-1."

But before you write "-1", you have to already have written "-2".

And before that, you already have to have written "-3", "-4", "-5," and so on, back to infinity.

That models an infinite regress of causes, because each integer is a prerequisite for the next one, just like each cause in an infinite regress is the prerequisite of the effect associated with it.

So just sit down with some paper, and try to do it.

And then respond as soon as you've managed to write "0," or when you realize the truth: that there will never come a point when you can write even a single integer, let alone reach the "0" point (i.e. the present).

And just as you can never start writing, so too a universe can never begin if it requires an infinite chain of causes.

[Age]

You can proceed from the assumption that matter did not created, but has always been, and will always be.
At this stage, scientists cannot prove it unequivocally, but they cannot refute it unequivocally either.

Actually, in various ways, they can, in fact, "refute" it.

The red shift effect shows the universe began from a singular event, not a cycle.

The "red shift effect" does NOT, and I will repeat DOES NOT, show that the Universe began AT ALL.

It is just 'you', human beings, who have interpreted, very incorrectly I will add, that the 'red shift effect' shows the universe began from singular event.

There simply isn't enough density of mass in the entire universe for anything to reverse the process again. So we can see it with our own eyes: the universe is not going back to what it was: it's linear in time. Entropy demonstrates that the universe is moving from a state of higher order to one of lower order, not self-assembling into higher-order states. But even if they didn't have that empirical proof there's the mathematical impossibility of an infinite regress of prerequisities (causes).

I would say it's pretty much a closed case.

I say 'you' have PROVED 'you' ARE a CLOSED CASE "immanuel can".

I honestly don't know what you would be able to point to in order to contest it.

LOL Thee ACTUAL Truth, would, could, and DOES.

[Age]

I do not know how to describe 'radical activists in our present', except to note that they exist. These people exist, they are active today -- that is all I know.

I am uncertain how to categorize those people who seem to struggle to defend the categories of concern through which they identify themselves, what they value, and what they fight for.

You've used the word 'liberal' before, so it appeared to me that you have ideas/opinions/thoughts about who/what they primarily are.

I notice (or believe that I notice) that you often ask the same question, with different inflections. For example:

So how much are you willing to look at and consider beyond what you've said, or does your focus/conclusion represent the only value you see?

My response is: How can I answer the question if I am uncertain what (loosely or precisely) you are referring to?

Hmm, well, I've said quite a lot to provide context. We all have views we want to share here, often ALONG WITH certain conclusions we've come to. What about considering MORE than those conclusions? What about questioning what we think we know the full extent of? And who we think the characters are? And who the 'enemy' is? Are we willing to question our own hard-built/hard-fought views?

Some of us have been and STILL ARE able to continue questioning, and answering. But then there are "others" like "lacewing", itself, who is NOT OPEN to the Fact that the view that it wants to share here, and which it has concluded is thee One and ONLY conclusion, is NOT AT ALL ABLE to even consider that they could be Wrong AT ALL. Let alone question their own hard-built and hard-fought views. As PROVED True by its interactions with "others".

Does that seem unfathomable or ridiculous? If so, why?

Well it is 'you', "lacewing", who is UNWILLING to question your own hard-built/hard-fought views. As PROVED True by your own interactions with "others" here.

Imagine a room filled with 100 people, each absolutely certain of and committed to their various opposing views/conclusions for achieving and living their values... and each finds it unfathomable to consider anything otherwise.

And the one known as "lacewing" here is a PRIME EXAMPLE of one of these here.

What is the path forward for them individually and as a group? I feel it's valuable to ask, can each step off their position just a few steps to see what else there might be worth considering. Might a slightly broader view bring more understanding... or even more peace and love? Is there a fear that the broader view will invalidate the previously hard-built view? Why would that be a bad thing if it's just 'more truth'?

Well 'you', "lacewing", are the one who can NOT take a step away from your hard-built views and BELIEFS here.

These are my philosophical questions. Do I really need to be more specific somehow?

When you say: "if people would stop being so polarized and think about what's reasonable for the diversity of people and life involved" I would suggest that you are suggesting a line of action, and that you are expressing a value-assessment of your own. So I would point out that you are, to use a term that I use, *inserting* a value-recommendation about right and good ethical actions.

I am simply proposing that we think more broadly than the platforms we seem to admire and maintain like well-tended yards.

Well if you PROPOSE IT, then WHY do you NOT do IT "yourself"?

If you EVER DID, then you will KNOW, EXACTLY, what WILL happen and occur.

I'm actually kind of baffled but intrigued by how you try to fit my questioning proposals into some kind of structure.

Are you actually kind of baffled but intrigued by how you DO thee EXACT SAME 'thing'?

Or, are you NOT able to step out of your hard-built and hard-fought for BELIEF that you would NOT POSSIBLY do any such thing, "yourself"?

Are we nothing more than a world of structures debating/fighting/opposing each other? Perhaps people can become so identified with their thought structures, they cannot hear or imagine beyond them?

When 'you', human beings, come to KNOW and REALIZE who and what 'I' am, EXACTLY, and who and what 'you' are, EXACTLY, then 'you' will KNOW and REALIZE that 'you' are, literally, the 'thoughts' (and 'emotions') within those human bodies. And, to HAVE TO lose those thoughts, because they are Wrong, is EXACTLY WHY 'you', human beings, literally, FIGHT for those hard-built and hard-fought for views and beliefs (thoughts). To CHANGE for the better, 'you' HAVE TO, literally, LET GO of "your" 'self', to become the BETTER version of thy True Self. But who of 'you' WANTS to ADMIT that 'you', "yourself" are Wrong?

Is it really so hard to imagine living life effectively without big mental stories -- rather, finding a balance between education, experience, and awareness of the current moment, without building or subscribing to a specific rigid platform/structure of some sort?

So, WHY is it 'you', "lacewing", who is one the the biggest hard-built ones FIGHTING FOR your hard-fought for views and beliefs here?

Why would we think we need to be identified through that?

Because it is LITERALLY who 'you' REALLY ARE.

Are these not reasonable questions for a philosophy forum?

Yes, VERY REASONABLE for ANY place when one is considering who and what they Truly ARE.

And, THEE ANSWERS are Truly SURPRISING and, literally, REVEALING.

What is likely to result from the value-assertions that we hold and subscribe to when they are applied (through paideia) to the world-at-large.

I think we have to get out of our own way. If we are servants of our structures, those structures can become our 'drivers' over (moreso than) our values. Values don't need a specific structure. The world-at-large can have very similar values, but we are ruled by so many other things. I think we each have to be willing to look beyond the structures to see what more is worth considering -- perhaps to lighten-up on the structure so that the value becomes more important -- and then keep doing more of that.

I just wish you ACTUALLY WOULD "lacewing", then 'you' will SEE and REALIZE just how Truly AMAZING and INSPIRING it REALLY IS to do so.