Peter Kropotkin wrote: ↑Wed Nov 08, 2023 9:01 pm
K: personally, I find it interesting that a thread titled, ''Moral compass''' would, should attract the attention of any religious type and yet, you won't engage.... you say, ''it not to spend more time on something than it's worth''
so, having an understanding of what a ''moral compass'' is not worth your time...or even sharing your idea of a ''moral compass'' isn't worth the effort?
If I were a guessing person, I would guess that you have already decided on what a ''moral compass'' and where you get it....and that is theological, not philosophical..
Though I often bloody my fists bashing mercilessly on poor IC I also, with a disarming florid heroism, rise to both defend and to explain him. So let me attempt that here now.
Though we must guess why IC has been completely absent on the issue unfolding in Palestine/Israel, still we can attempt some guesses as to why this is. I know I have wondered. Over in the Ethical Theory subforum IC has been engaged for weeks now. What is odd, to me, is that it is like mental and theoretical jerking-off within word games of ethical abstraction. But I have gathered that this arena is one of IC's preferred hobby-zones. He
luvs that sort of engagement and theorizing where, effectively, no rubber meets the road.
But to see and to talk about how applied ethics bears directly on the unfolding events in Palestine/Israel -- he can do nothing else but avoid the issue totally. Why? Because when Christian Zionism and Jewish Zionism are confronted for what they result in the ethical opprobrium is too great. IC must wilt away and back into abstraction-land.
But I need to clarify the following: Once IC and I could engage, and we did engage. But when, in his eyes, I *went south* so-to-speak and I could no longer sustain the sort of belief that IC is deeply involved in, he could do nothing else but turn against me with some contempt. He dismisses therefore all the ideas I deal in for that reason. And this is because I level attacks against the structure of belief. I've said it before: these belief-systems are constructed with columns. If one column falls the entire structure is in danger of collapse. Therefore, IC cannot budge on any point that is part of a traditional and literal Christian worldview. End of story. Nothing more need be said. That explains IC.
But this has bearing on a larger and more general issue: how these beliefs
function in our present. And that is why, I think, the topic has remained rather vital for all of us.
IC cannot engage, except through dismissal and ridicule, with any of the ideas I bring forward, and his comment "not to spend more time on something than it's worth" is best understood to explain his feelings toward
those ideas. He might enage with someone else.
When for example I compare the figure of Yahweh to a demoniac character in a novel rather than to a god of transcendent goodness, I go
waaaaay south in his view. A blasphemy. But the original Jewish god Yahweh is
not a figure of transcendent goodness. He is a complex, multi-layered construct that reflects, largely his human creators. This idea is utterly intolerable to IC. Though I must say it is not intolerable to some Christian theologians. But IC is a dedicated
Christian Zionist, and that is a special animal. Christian Zionism is a recent heresy (if I can use this word) and we are now witnessing how its manifestation unfolds. It does not bring anything remotely resembling salvation or goodness, it brings the threat of annihilation, discord, dismemberment and real human ugliness.
By their fruits ye shall know them, eh?
It is obvious that IC is philosophically trained and capable, in a discursive sense, but he cannot approach any ultimate questions and issues through philosophical means and methods. His is rabid belief. In this sense he corresponds to some of the Jewish Rabbis I have linked to. But this all makes some sense, no? If Christianity is the natural offshoot of Judaism those tendencies will carry over into Christianity. And IC is an exponent of a peculiar evolution of the Christian form -- evangelism. I have wondered the degree to which his version has some links to Calvinism. It is
that intractable.
What is the
function of beliefs of this sort? That is what interests me. They serve
purposes, conscious or unconscious.
As to
a definition of God my takeaway (form the months spent here) is less that God does not exist, and more that whatever God is is incomprehensible to us today. I recognize atheism as an alternative though I am not an atheist.
We cannot seem to
explain God. Yet we are
here and we appear as aware beings in existence. It is as if, atleast on some levels, we have to start all over again.
