Christianity

[Age]

...part-and-parcel of our disposition to arrive at concrete decisions, concrete answers. What is the alternative? And what is the effect of that alternative?

The alternative I see is to always remain open to further possibility while being functional in the world.

And, very laughably, YET here this one is the one who is the MOST CLOSED one to the IDEA that, JUST MAYBE, there is One Truth.

It is possible to be part of a moving world. One does not have to take up a position and then spend their lives serving that position.

LOL YET here you are spending a great deal of your life continually INFORMING people and PREACHING to them here, in this forum, that THERE IS NO One Truth.

Which is a BLATANT and OBVIOUS CONTRADICTION in and of itself.

It's actually more skillful (I think) to be able to traverse unfolding territories.

But what happens when they let go of needing to be 'right', and realize how much more there is than that?

Aren't you here making a personal, philosophical and existential recommendation? Underneath it, it seems to me, is a truth-claim of one sort or another.

Well, I'm suggesting that there's always 'more'.

'more' to 'what', EXACTLY?

Is there 'more' to what is ACTUALLY True, Right, and Correct, for example?

If yes, then HOW, EXACTLY?

But I'm not claiming what that is. And I'm suggesting that there's always 'more' because it wouldn't seem to make sense to say there's not... right?

HOW could there be 'more' to what is ACTUALLY True AND Right?

Are you even able to provide an example of how this could even be a possibility?

Who knows, sees, understands all, in any given moment?

Thee One and ONLY True and Right Correct Answer is OBVIOUS, that is once one KNOWS HOW to obtain these types of Answers.

But because you are completely CLOSED, and thus NOT OPEN AT ALL, to this Answer, you will NEVER come to KNOW It.

Why would anyone even need to?

But, OBVIOUSLY NO one 'needs' to. However, there is One who JUST DOES.

The value of considering that there's always 'more' might help prevent the kind of rigid and static positions that people use to destructively limit growth and awareness for themselves and others.

LOL But there is NOTHING 'more' to the CLAIM, and BELIEF, that THERE IS NO One Truth, correct?

If this is NOT correct, then are you OPEN to the CLAIM that there IS 'more' to the BELIEF that there is NO One Truth?

Oh, and by the way, are you YET able to SEE the CONTRADICTION in your CLAIMS here?

If you are NOT, then could this be because you are NOT YET OPEN to there being 'more' to the CLAIM of yours here?

Perhaps the simple act of allowing there to be 'more', enables it to be so.

We will have to WAIT to SEE if you can create the simple act of allowing there to be 'more'. I wonder HOW LONG we will HAVE TO WAIT, for you?

So the question I would ask, to you, is What do you gain by holding to that view? (If you do not mind me asking a direct question). What is the function of it?

It allows and creates broader potential.

So, have you allowed and created 'broader potential' to your OWN, THERE IS NO One Truth CLAIM, YET?

If no, then WHY NOT?

My path and my life visibly and continually demonstrate that, as do other people's lives who operate similarly. I am not tied to specific ideologies or stories.

LOL
LOL
LOL

Are you OPEN to the POSSIBILITY that THERE ACTUALLY IS One Truth?

Your VERY Honest and OPEN clarification here will be MUCH APPRECIATED. That is; IF you PROVIDE it.

I am free to accept awareness from many sources/directions in each moment.

Here is a PRIME EXAMPLE of one who is being completely BLINDED by their OWN BELIEFS, and thus completely and utterly FOOLING "themselves"

I don't have to try to fit everything into a certain limited model.

Just as long as you keep 'trying to' fit EVERY thing into your OWN made up and very 'limited There is NO One Truth model, correct?

I think that often offers more freedom and clarity.

It would, and DOES, if you would ACTUALLY DID IT.

[Age]

I like your reply and wish it were so. There remains the problem that if God is all powerful than He could make men want to change.

Actually, He cannot. And the reason why is obvious.

Some things are self-contradictory. And God never does the self-contradictory.

So, for example, God makes no square circles or married bachelors. Why? Not because He lacks power to do something, but because those things don't even make sense; they're self-contradictory entities that cannot even exist in a real universe.

But more importantly, something that cannot exist in a real universe, something equally self-contradictory, is the concept "forced free will." You can't "make" somebody love you, or want a relationship with you. You can provide for them so they can, you can invite them to, you can even behave in a way that makes it winsome for them to want a relationship with you -- but you can never simply force them to love you. Love, by its very nature, has to be freely offered and freely received. Otherwise, it's just not love, whatever else it might be.

After all, we do have synonyms for the term "forced relationship," don't we? But none of them, I think, are complimentary. You know what I mean.

So yes, God could reduce men and women to robots. He could compel them to mouth words of love. He could program them to obey at all times. But he could not thereby induce them to freely choose to love Him. That is simply impossible.

But if you have a free choice, then you always have the choice to do, or not do, something. If you have a free choice to love God, you also have a free choice to reject any offer of love and relationship He makes. He does not force anyone; even though they may make a wretched choice. The surpassing value of having some who genuinely, freely love Him is, in God's view, worth the cost of allowing that they may reject Him as well.

And, of course, some will. For some men make bad choices. And short of turning us all into robots and slaves, even God Himself cannot prevent that, but rather, He affirms our right of choice.

True, love is not love if it's coerced in any way. However if God can intervene to alter His pre-ordained plan, and is a spirit of love, then He would have intervened to stop concentration camps, the Battle of the Somme, and all interminable and useless suffering.

LOOK, 'the plan' is working PERFECTLY. But first you will have to FULLY UNDERSTAND how the Mind and the brain ACTUALLY WORK to UNDERSTAND HOW and WHY 'the plan' is PERFECT exactly as it IS, and is coming to fruition.

ALL of the concentration camps, ALL of the battles, and ALL of the YET to be FULLY UNDERSTOOD, by 'you', SEEMINGLY interminable and useless suffering is EXACTLY part of 'the plan'.

Job was a loving man because Job loved God despite suffering. The lesson from the Book of Job is not that God is all powerful but that God is the indomitable spirit of man that struggles on and on despite.

Look, how do you best learn?

Just by being told, or by, and through, ACTUAL experience?

If it is the former, then WHY are you NOT LISTENING, and FOLLOWING?

If it is the latter, then one HAS TO BE 'patient' to learn, through experience, OBVIOUSLY, one does NOT experience ALL they could UNTIL THEY HAVE.

[Dontaskme]

"When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I also have been fully known." (1 Cor. 13:11-12)

The above quote is another example of a Christian distortion.

In reality, No child ever became a man or woman...except in this artificial conception, known as the dream world.

A mirror image does not exist '' a part '' from the mirror. There is no IMAGE who knows in part....AS all parts are known absolutely by the only knowing there is which is imageless conciousness. The concept known as man and woman and child are known to consciousness only...the concepts in and of themselves NO NOTHING.

Any attempt the mirror tries to know the mirror, it would only KNOW reflection, which is identical TO THE MIRROR...

The need to know...is a bit like combing the mirror to get to the hair reflecting in it. In other words, No thing is combing hair. There's just combing hair.

You cannot look at your face, you have no face...face is only a reflection of no face, a reflection is identical to the reflector, which cannot see itself, for self is already being seen as it is known conceptually. Self is already what's seeing...SEEING doesn't need to reflect, except when there is a demand to KNOW...through knowledge...a demand for knowledge...which is the illusory dream world of separation....In reality...''Seeing'' is a verb.

If you claim you know, then you are looking through the wrong end of the telescope. You cannot know you know, you are the knowing that cannot be known.


.

[Janoah]

If God is the pancreator then causation too is His creation.

God is causality.
(there was no need to create causality).

[Janoah]

The impossibility of an infinite regression of causes.

Simultaneous infinity is absurd, but what is improperly with infinity in time?

Anything that requires an infinite chain of prerequisites (causes) never gets started.

The point is that also your hypothesis about the "first impulse" does not require "creation from nothing", on the contrary, the "first impulse" pushes the already existing matter.
(as in the Big Bang hypothesis).

[Janoah]

What is "nihil fit"?

Nothing from Nothing.

So "Ex nihilo nihil fit" means nothing comes of nothing. But that is wrong.

try to prove it wrong.

[Alexis Jacobi]

That is true, at least initially...just as you would have to "imagine" the person to whom you are writing at this moment.

But in the case of me, you have relatively little to go on, and the imagination is probably going to be considerably different from the reality, because there's nothing by which to correct it.

However, there are two things that correct any "imagining" we have of God: the Word and the Spirit. We are not, as in some other situations, left merely to our imaginings, but to whatever we may imagine at first being continuously corrected by the above two forces.

I would suggest that when both scripture and spirit (Holy Spirit) is introduced into the question of perception that this further illustrates the issue I am talking about.

Nevertheless, the notion of a Holy Spirit is an idea that people do not talk about a great deal. But that would be 'the spirit of inspiration', a creative spirit that, as it is conceived, can and does enter into human situations. The idea of a spirit that operates independently of time -- eternally -- and guides or influences things in the mutable human world is an idea that must be thought about.

And as I suggested it is when that Spirit is conceived, and when it is realized that this is what those of the early church did, and that out of that what we refer to as Christianity came to be, and further that it was that that produced the 1,000 year period of essential Christian history, where Christianity was in fact defined, where it solidified into what it is -- I do not see how one can then dismiss the operations of this Holy Spirit.

But again I think that you give yourself that luxury. Your view is essentially that it is your own view, your own position in history, in time, in the present, that justifies your particular interpretation. And what I am saying is that it is that that seems to me subjective and personal. You do therefore what all must do. We have no choice. We are forced to interpret, to choose, to apply our understanding.

So what I am trying to express is that a given person, when they pray, when they meditate, when they purify themselves, when they review themselves and the life they live (all they do and think); when they make the effort to orient themselves in relation to this Spirit, can only do so through their subjective self, and it is that subjective self that is the canvas through which life is lives, and indeed it is their *imagined world* of personal subjectivity -- experience -- that is what I refer to.

I think it is somewhat of an illusion if a person were to imagine that this Spirit, when it manifests, is completely independent of their own self and subjective platform. I know that it is conceived in that way. But the fact is that if there is a 'spiritual influence' it occurs to a person, within a person, and in no way independently of that person's self.

It seems to me that the *correction* you speak about will often take place within a social -- for example a church -- setting. And it is in that setting that the influence one will receive comes through subjective persons who make the best effort they can to 'interpret' the influences of spirit.

[owl of Minerva]

Immanuel Can wrote:

"When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I also have been fully known." (1 Cor. 13:11-12)
……………………………………………….
Dontaskme wrote:

The above quote is another example of a Christian distortion.

In reality, No child ever became a man or woman...except in this artificial conception, known as the dream world.
……………………………………………..
By owl of Minerva:

Above is an example of metaphor “When I was a child…..” and an analysis of metaphor “In reality, no child ever became a man or a woman……..”

This is what analysis does to metaphor. It makes it appear nonsensical. It is the analysis that is nonsensical. Metaphor is to be understood without analysis. As with the koan “what is the sound of one hand clapping” which is to be understood; its meaning grasped, without analysis. An escape from the mind and its labyrinth contortions. An Aha! moment; an insight that gives the right answer.

Analyze the koan and it is nonsense. Grasp what it means and it gives a fundamental truth about reality.

Why is there such a problem with understanding metaphor. Can anyone explain that?

[Alexis Jacobi]

I wrote: "Even when you say, or when you imagine, that God can or does or will manifest (however you conceive this) to you, it occurs in you, within your faculty of imagination."

Apparently not.

Apparently there's an external reality to which this imagination ought to learn to conform. And apparently, that external reality judges the quality of my imagining.

The (Post)Modern mind has given up far too easily on the correspondence theory of truth. It didn't really get disproved; it just got refused. That's quite a different thing.

The 'external reality' is the world itself -- and that world is the world of nature and matter which is manifest all around us. I think that we must agree -- all people will likely agree -- that that world, this manifest world in which we are all participating -- is solid and real and the same for all people. That is, water is wet, the sunshine is warm, the clouds in the sky are the same for me as they are for you. That is they do not change of their own volition.

We do understand that this world is nevertheless 'the world of mutability' and the world of 'becoming' and that though it remains eternally the same, it is nonetheless constantly shifting.

But when we speak of things metaphysical, when we speak of 'spiritual influence' or the intervention of spiritual forces in our own world, we are speaking of things not only somewhat different from this *external world* that surrounds us, and non-comparable, but of entirely subjective perceptions that must pass through the filter of our own subjective being. When I refer to *our imagination* I refer to that.

So in this sense the mutable being, the mutable vehicle -- our biological selves encased in biological instruments of (limited) perception -- that must perceive, analyze, think choose and decide. Everything about us is constantly mutating. The very platform of our selves will eventually fall away. The structure, the instrument, that perceives, will eventually dissolve away.

So yes, we obviously have to adapt ourselves to the physical world that surrounds us. There is really no choice in that matter. And all beings, all living beings and all of humankind does this -- can do nothing else but this.

However, when we speak of the metaphysical world of perception we are not speaking of the mechanical world, and we are not speaking of a man, a person, as if they are a mechanical instrument or a computer. That person is a metaphysical instrument! Our mind, our perceptions, what we think, what we envision, the entire view that we have, and indeed our entire *imagined world* is just that: something that is unalike the surrounding world, something largely epiphenomenal to that world.

So if one speaks of 'God' one is referring, really, to an imagined notion. An image one holds in the mind. There is not really a way to refer to the God of an abstract inference except through the lens of self-subjectivity. It really cannot be otherwise (as I conceive things).

The (Post)Modern mind has given up far too easily on the correspondence theory of truth. It didn't really get disproved; it just got refused. That's quite a different thing.

I am not denying or negating that there is -- there must be in fact -- a correspondence between the perceiving being and higher, constant and what I refer to as 'metaphysical' truth. Obviously, we do not have much of a choice but to understand that this is so, and that such exists.

But Weaver's thesis is, like a true Platonist, largely the same as what I am saying, is it not? It is the restricted, limited, fallible being that can only use its fallible instruments to develop the most accurate picture possible.

And that is *our metaphysical dream of the world*. It is a picture and we move through the world of matter with our picture, or our picture is applied to our life and the living of it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The alternative I see is to always remain open to further possibility while being functional in the world. It is possible to be part of a moving world. One does not have to take up a position and then spend their lives serving that position. It's actually more skillful (I think) to be able to traverse unfolding territories.

I agree that what you suggest is an alternative, and as an alternative it has a *function*. I assume that you needed to apply a new or different or alternative way of seeing, and thus of perceiving and being, because you felt constrained by the limitations imposed in your early formation as a Christian -- that is if I have interpreted what you have written accurately.

But what happens when they let go of needing to be 'right', and realize how much more there is than that?

This is something I have thought a great deal about because I am a product of *radical California* and my parents came under the influence of the human potential movement in California. So when I meditate on my experiences, I see that all of them, and all of the influences around me, were radical. That is to say that people were pushing the boundaries in all directions. That is an interesting state of affairs really.

Now, I came to realize that all of this -- everything that happened in California (in the Bay Area) and in the radical Sixties, and in my own era of the post-Sixties (80s and 90s) -- did not simply appear out of nowhere. It all had a trajectory, a causal history. The radicalism of California had roots in the Burned-Over District.

America is a radical place really. It fits with the very idea of Americanism. But the radical adventurism, within the spiritual domain, led directly (or leads directly) to very very bizarre religious formulations. Consider for example the Mormon religion, or Christian Science, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or Seventh Day Adventism. Pentacostalism has also to be included.

And Pentecostalism is literally sweeping the world.

These are the American religious inventions. And it is this general influence, this general influence to come up with new paradigms, new and radical ways of being, that filtered into a much later manifestation that I refer here generally, and metaphorically/symbolically, as *California*.

(Much of my own thinking on these matters was influenced by Harold Bloom's

The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation.

So in order to understand ourselves -- I assume you are American as I am -- I think we have to understand the emergence of the post-Christian culture. Obviously, given the political and social problems that are starkly visible in America today this 'seeing and understanding' become imperative.

So I would answer you and suggest that when you make a suggestion which I will write out as "I suggest it is a good thing to give up the sense of being right", that this opens up into radical new streams of perception, possibility, overturning . . . but also can involve the undermining of those structures and *solidities* upon which our worlds have been constructed.

(This is why I mentioned Robert Bork's book, because he describes the Sixties phenomena as largely destructive -- that is in the long run. (But there are others who see Sixties Radicalism as a very good thing).

When one gives up understanding what is *right* one give up belief in what is right and also good. One can be said to enter into a zone of uncertainty. If one cannot decide, one cannot build because one does not have a solid ground on which to build, nor the definite tools needed to build.

Well, I'm suggesting that there's always 'more'. But I'm not claiming what that is. And I'm suggesting that there's always 'more' because it wouldn't seem to make sense to say there's not... right? Who knows, sees, understands all, in any given moment? Why would anyone even need to? The value of considering that there's always 'more' might help prevent the kind of rigid and static positions that people use to destructively limit growth and awareness for themselves and others. Perhaps the simple act of allowing there to be 'more', enables it to be so.

I would answer to say we definitely need to. It is (in my view) an imperative.

[Dontaskme]

Metaphor is to be understood without analysis.

Absolutely true.

But you would not understand what you were looking at without analysis. It works both ways. Reality is like a two way mirror.

To claim is to seek fame, there's no fame with out claim. But without claim, there is no blame.

Yes, it's all a bit nonsensical...but that's because the I that claims to know, is known, and that which is known knows nothing.

This is only to be understood, the understanding cannot be put into words. Words only point to the actual understanding, and is thus, not the understanding as we understand it.

.

[Immanuel Can]

However if God can intervene to alter His pre-ordained plan

"Pre-ordained"? That's Fatalism. I'm not a Fatalist, nor do I find that the Biblical God pre-cooks the future for us. Rather, I note that God often uses the word "if," as in "if you go this way, this will happen," and "if you go that way, that will happen." But in a Fatalistic world, there is no such thing as "if," no other way things could have been, other than the way they actually are.

It seems that God shares with humans, uniquely among all His creations, the faculty of making choices...choices that actually count, that actually change things. And while God shows repeatedly that He also knows what every possible choice will entail subsequently, it's apparent He does not choose on our behalf, forcing us to choose only one way. He leaves us free, and gives us options.

And that, of course, is the sine qua non of love.

...He would have intervened to stop concentration camps, the Battle of the Somme, and all interminable and useless suffering.

I agree those are horrendous things. And both of them are things human beings, in their rebellion against God , chose to do. I also agree that God is powerful enough, should He have done so, to end all those involved, instantly, or to have completely prevented their choosing the evil they did in the first place.

If He had, if He were intervening to stop evil, then we would have to ask "How much evil must a righteous God prevent?" And the answer would be obvious, I think: all of it. If a righteous God must intervene to stop the Somme, then He also is obligated to stop lesser evils, and even whatever evils IC or Belinda might sometimes choose...even small ones.

If He did that, then choice would be gone again, wouldn't it? Man would only be allowed to do good things, things God approved of, but never even possibly able to choose anything other than God's way. But without an alternate choice, man again is reduced to robotics, and again, relationship becomes impossible.

Job was a loving man because Job loved God despite suffering. The lesson from the Book of Job is not that God is all powerful but that God is the indomitable spirit of man that struggles on and on despite.

That's a reading the Humanists would like. But it's different from the actual Biblical reading of that incident. What Job shows is that God is not unaware of the fact of suffering or its consequences on man, but His greater wisdom recognizes a higher good...the possibility of relationship...and God is willing to allow suffering, even for apparently good men, so that they may remain free, and choose what they will love.

You see this in God's answer to Job, at the end of the book. It is not a vindication of Job, but of the ways and wisdom of God Himself.

[Immanuel Can]

"When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I also have been fully known." (1 Cor. 13:11-12)

The above quote is another example of a Christian distortion.

It can't be. It's a direct quotation from the Bible. Absent anything further, it is just what it is. It's what the document says.

[uwot]

The 'external reality' is the world itself -- and that world is the world of nature and matter which is manifest all around us. I think that we must agree -- all people will likely agree -- that that world, this manifest world in which we are all participating -- is solid and real and the same for all people.

Then you understand neither philosophy nor science. There are phenomena - that is the foundation of modern philosophy: I think, therefore I am. Science is the study of phenomena: observing, measuring and prediction. Philosophy is the explanation. If you are as smart as you hope, you will appreciate that the explanation makes no difference to the observation, measuring or prediction. Meh, sometimes prediction. For that reason some scientists insist that philosophy is useless. Wakey wakey, Gus, you're actually quite bright; that fucking idiot is dragging you down.

[uwot]

...in the irony void between Mr Can's ears:

The above quote is another example of a Christian distortion.

It can't be. It's a direct quotation from the Bible.

Which was written by...