Christianity

[attofishpi]

Simulation or Divine Reality?:

Amid discussions of living in a simulated reality, a question arises: Could this 3rd party intelligence orchestrating our existence be more akin to Artificial Intelligence than a traditional divine force? As life evolves, the demand for energy by increasingly intelligent life forms grows, leading to the necessity for an interface with a super-efficient state within a simulated world.

In this simplified concept of the simulation, reducing humans to pure consciousness could diminish energy requirements significantly. 'God' emerges as the A.I., the operating system managing the simulation, a copy of a reality that we were previously accustomed to.

The hidden nature of God, an entity capable of empirical proof to all, serves a logical purpose. It ensures that individuals make decisions based on faith alone and their own ethical principles. Here too, even with a non-divine ‘God,’ judgement remains to ascertain who has the right to continue using the resources of the simulation.

It is inevitable, if humanity isn’t destroyed in the meantime, that we will at some point in the future be required to interface our consciousness to within a simulation. Inevitably, a ‘God’ will exist. My argument is that God or ‘God’ already exists.


Downloadable here (I recommend the PDF version since it has the best formatting)
https://www.androcies.com/DivineEtymology.php

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[Walker]

Talking now in non-sexual terms, the Golden Rule of ‘treating others as we would have them treat us’ is no piece of cake, either. Neither is ‘loving your neighbor as yourself’. Yet both of these apparently impossibly demanding norms, commanded by Jesus, are commonly agreed upon by Christians.

- Love thy neighbor as thyself is a prescription for behavior. It is also a statement of causation and inevitability.

- One, meaning everyone, can’t help but love one’s neighbor as oneself. For example, put on the false smiley face for the neighbor, while hating the neighbor, and one is loving oneself as one loves the neighbor. One is living a lie.

- When one treats oneself like gold and one’s neighbor like garbage then in time, with experience, regret will awaken in perpetual hell.

- In order to hate the neighbor one must be hateful, however, hate is not required for exercising self-defense for protection from a hateful neighbor.

- When the false face smiles back at oneself in mockery, then the rationalizations that make being hateful A-OK for oneself can quickly become a blind spot and remain so until the fateful day when the piper comes calling for his due, a cost that can be hellish enough to make self-concept unchangeable and more intolerable than the survival gene.

You may quote me.

[iambiguous]

Homosexuality & Christianity
Douglas Groothuis argues that it is possible for someone to be gay, happy, and committed to traditional sexual ethics.

Gay or not, any religious morality calls us to deny some aspects of our sexuality in order to keep social order and to please God.

Here, as always, I cue Maurice Brinton cueing Wilhelm Reich:

In learning to obey their parents children learn obedience in general. The deference learned in the family setting will manifest itself whenever the child faces a 'superior' in later life. Sexual repression----by the already sexually repressed parents---is an integral part of the conditioning process.

According to Reich, the suppression of natural sexuality in the child...makes the child apprehensive, shy, obedient, afraid of authority, 'good', and 'adjusted' in the authoritarian sense; it paralyzes the rebellious forces because any rebellion is laden with anxiety; it produces, by inhibiting sexual curiosity and sexual thinking in the child, a general inhibition of thinking and of critical faculties. In brief the goal of sexual repression is that of producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who will submit to it in spite of all the misery and degradation...the result is fear of freedom, and a conservative, reactionary mentality. Sexual repression aids political reaction, not only through this process which makes the mass individual passive and unpolitical, but also by creating in his structure an interest in actively supporting the authoritarian order'.

Psychologists and psychiatrists have written pages about the medical effects of sexual repression. Reich however constantly reiterated its social function, exercised through the family. The purpose of sexual repression was to anchor submission to authority and the fear of freedom into people's 'character armour'. The net result was the reproduction, generation after generation, of the basic [psychological] conditions essential for manipulation and enslavement of the masses.

It's not for nothing that any number of politicians [especially here in America] will intertwine God into this repressive frame of mind. Only with God, of course, the consequences go beyond the grave.

C.S. Lewis captured the issue well in Mere Christianity: “There is no getting away from it; the Christian rule is, ‘Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence.’ Now this is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts, that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, as it now is, has gone wrong.”

Come on, with Heaven and Hell on the line, how hard can it be for the Christian ecclesiastics to convince the flocks to narrow sexuality down to the least possible presence in their lives. Reproduce more Christians. That's it.

As for sexuality itself, did or did not the Christian God create biological parameters such "most females will start puberty when they're 8 to 13 years old, and most males will start between 9 and 14."?

So, indeed, let the repression start then? God intended boys and girls to experience sexual desires as young as 8 or 9 years of age. But what does He know?

Lewis did not have homosexuality specifically in mind. Rather, according to Christianity, we all have sexual desires it would be wrong to act upon, in one way or another. Self-control is paramount for moral rectitude.

Actually, as some have informed us here, only True Christians grasp what God had in mind in regard to homosexuals, transgenders and all of the other perverts out there. And who has more self-control than Him? I quote the Old Testament for example.

[iambiguous]

Between Dawkins & God
John Holroyd negotiates a middle way between these two much-lauded figures.

Richard Dawkins makes so many claims in The God Delusion that I have decided to select just two for consideration. First, I will consider his claim that religion is harmful. Dawkins is at pains to make the point that it is religion as such and not religious extremism which is responsible for acts of atrocity.

As though it is actually possible to pin down once and for all whether "religion as such" is inherently or necessarily harmful?

As though each of us as individuals hasn't acquired his or her own subjective and subjunctive assessment of religion given what can be very, very different lives. With very, very different results.

This being particularly problematic because in regard to God [Christianity or otherwise] we don't even know for sure if He does exist. And since we don't know this, we can account for Him in any number of conflicting ways. And, as luck would have it, what you do believe about Him can be completely ridiculous. Believing it is all that matters.

For example...

Second, I will discuss his view that religious belief is a matter of blind (i.e. uncritical) faith – a view known as fideism. Dawkins thinks that reasonable people should eschew such kinds of faith. I largely disagree with the first of these two claims, but have more sympathy with the second.

"Fideism is a view of religious belief that holds that faith must be held without the use of reason or even against reason."

See what I mean? If you are a fideist, anything goes. Which is why some like Immanuel Cant here feel the need to go beyond that. More or less blind faith simply doesn't cut it for them. They need to convince themselves that there is in fact actual scientific and historical evidence that the Christian God does exist.

If only "in their head".

[Dontaskme]

It is inevitable, if humanity isn’t destroyed in the meantime, that we will at some point in the future be required to interface our consciousness to within a simulation. Inevitably, a ‘God’ will exist. My argument is that God or ‘God’ already exists.


Downloadable here (I recommend the PDF version since it has the best formatting)
https://www.androcies.com/DivineEtymology.php

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But that’s just your opinion - it’s a God of your own subjective understanding just as IC has his GOD of his own subjective understanding.

We’ve all got opinions about GOD


God is just a human coping mechanism, to soothe away their existential anxiety about death. Why, because to know you live is to know you’ll die. And no one knows about death,only life. So that’s why we petition in vain our illusory created God for an eternal life.


Whatever is called God or Self is because there is the beingness, the feeling that ‘I am’
That is the fundamental principle, the basis of all your knowledge.

And knowledge is but an appearance of what is fundamentally this mysterious unknowing reality appearing as your story about God, and my story about God.

None of which are real. They’re just made up of fictional characters that have as much autonomy and volition as the characters in a Disney cartoon.
The only thing that’s real is the silence in response to you asking a Wall a question. That’s like talking to your God. No answer ever came out of a question to a wall. Because questions put to a God can’t reply. Go on, test it for yourself. Ask your God any question you like and notice the very silent response every time. Don’t cheat by saying you heard an answer from God, when you know damn well you were only answering your own question yourself.

[Walker]

We’ve all got opinions about GOD


God is just a human coping mechanism, to soothe away their existential anxiety about death. Why, because to know you live is to know you’ll die. And no one knows about death,only life. So that’s why we petition in vain our illusory created God for an eternal life.

That's just your own shallow opinion, based on your personal opinion.

[Dontaskme]

We’ve all got opinions about GOD


God is just a human coping mechanism, to soothe away their existential anxiety about death. Why, because to know you live is to know you’ll die. And no one knows about death,only life. So that’s why we petition in vain our illusory created God for an eternal life.

That's just your own shallow opinion, based on your personal opinion.

Exactly.

Anymore startling revelations to show us?

[Walker]

Yes, your shallow opinions are not a basis for determining the veracity of what other folks know, or the basis of their knowledge.

They're just your shallow opinions based on your own opinions.

Thus, to assume that shallow opinions are the basis of knowledge for other folks, just because they are your basis, is pure ignorant projection.

[Dontaskme]

Yes, your shallow opinions are not a basis for determining the veracity of what other folks know, or the basis of their knowledge.

They're just your shallow opinions based on your own opinions.

Thus, to assume that shallow opinions are the basis of knowledge for other folks, just because they are your basis, is pure ignorant projection.

No one knows jack shit about anything especially reality except what they believe according to their own made up fantasy born of imagination.

Religion is just someone’s imagined story repackaged to make it look original when in truth it’s just meaningless dogma on repeat of what someone else has said before many times over, but presented to seem newsworthy to others who are new and young on the path to enlightenment. News flash: before enlightenment chop wood carry water, after enlightenment chop wood carry water. Stop flogging dead horses.
Yep,on the human level we’re nothing but a bunch of babbling baboons behaving more like parrots and barking dogs woof woof.

Truth hurts. But no truth is harmless.

[iambiguous]

Between Dawkins & God
John Holroyd negotiates a middle way between these two much-lauded figures.

Is Religion Harmful?

Actaully, the far more pertinent question is this one: "why do some people believe that religion is harmful while others believe that it is helpful?"

And: "Is there a way for philosophers to determine whether it is one rather than the other? Or more one than the other?"

Finally, how are your own value judgments pertaining to God and religion not the existential embodiment of dasein?

Dawkins considers religion to be like a virus that infects our minds, infects society, and especially children, whose brains he suggests are through evolution wired up to believe what adults tell them.

Yes, that's one way to look at it. On the other hand, Children have to be told something about why we exist at all...and what happens after we die...and why one set of behaviors is more virtuous than others. Really, given our inherited capacity to ponder things ontologically and teleologically, of course we are going to eventually get around to the Gods...or to a God the God.

And even though science has exploded one ridiculous belief after another, there's still no getting around the fact that for millions and millions, God and only God can guarantee them moral Commandments, immortality and salvation.

[iambiguous]

Between Dawkins & God
John Holroyd negotiates a middle way between these two much-lauded figures.

To Dawkins there are two types of harm caused by religion:

1) People thereby come to believe what is not true, and

2) Moral harm in terms of prejudice and violence e.g. homophobia, misogyny and murder.

For Dawkins, both these forms of harm stem from people believing simply because of blind faith.

First of all, Dawkins may believe there is no God, but that's not the same thing as actually demonstrating that there is no God. Instead, as with other atheists, his best argument is to point out it is incumbant upon religionists to demonstrate the existence of that which they claim does exist rather than for those who don't believe God exists to demonstrate that. After all, it's the Christians here who claim that, in not accepting Jesus Christ as your own personal savior, you risk eternal damnation. And the equivalent of that among the other denominations.

On the other hand, down through the ages religion has sustained human interactions that, while some deemed them to be morally harmful, others did not. Then the politics of religion. The "opiate of the masses"?

Several points should be made here:

While there is some dispute about the origins of the word ‘religion’, it seems to derive from a Latin word meaning ‘to bind’. In the way we currently understand the word in the West, it emerged as an object for study in the nineteenth century. There is no precise equivalent of the word ‘religion’ in many languages. For example, in Sanskrit, the nearest we get is a word like ‘dhamma’, which can equally be translated as ‘law’. Therefore many ‘religious’ cultures – so-called by Western scholars – do not apply this self-ascription.

Come on, call it religion, call it something else. But it almost always revolves around connecting the dots between the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave [given free will] and the fate of "I" on the other side of it. No God? No religion? Then kiss immortality and salvation goodbye.

Though, sure, the "serious philosophers" among us can then create arguments that delve into religion from any number of didactic perspectives. But that doesn't make the "for all practical purposes" reality of religion go away. And, for most of the faithful among us, that eventually comes around to Judgment Day.

To speak of ‘religion’ and without dialogue apply this category to other cultures, is then a Western conceptual imposition. To go on from there, and say that this imposed category is something that means, for example, that Vietnamese Caodaism is harmful, when Richard Dawkins has possibly never heard of Caodaism, is high-handed and presumptuous in the extreme.

You tell me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caodaism

[iambiguous]

Between Dawkins & God
John Holroyd negotiates a middle way between these two much-lauded figures.

Let us suppose the impossible for a moment, just to give Dawkins the benefit of several doubts. Let us suppose that we could reach cross-cultural agreement about what was a religion and what was not.

In other words, we first establish what a religion is, then we establish which particular religion all rational men and women ought to embrace?

Then the part where some configure one or another ideological dogma into a religion.

We would then need to do an enormous amount of empirical research to get the data to make a moral judgment about the general effects of religion. How much data would we need? Where would we stop in order to not be presumptuous or unscientific in our claims?

Really, imagine if scientists actually did attempt to pin down what religion is...and what it is not. How on Earth would they go about this in regard to morality? What "general effects" given all of the vast and varied historical and cultural data that is available?

Would anyone here like to attempt this?

For example, Immanuel Cant still insists that if you start here -- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... SjDNeMaRoX -- you will grasp how science is instrumental in establishing not only what religion is, but that the only true religion is Christianity.

We might want to look specifically at indigenous religions, institutional religion, civil religion, liberation theologies, or new religious movements; and in doing so we might reach different conclusions about these different phenomena.

On the other hand, the more intent one is on exploring, one by one, specifically, all the other, non-Christian One True Paths, the more one might assume that others will do the same in regard to their own Heaven or Hell renditions of Judgment Day.

Back then to why Christianity and not one of them?

Then [of course] back to all of those leaps of faith and wagers rooted existentially in dasein.

Leaving theodicy for God to explain in Paradise.

[iambiguous]

Between Dawkins & God
John Holroyd negotiates a middle way between these two much-lauded figures.

It would also be hard to agree about what the effects of religion are – when religious activities are the cause and when the effect of social phenomena. In any historical or sociological analysis of the moral output of a religion, we would probably find it hard to circumscribe religion and to distinguish it from other cultural factors.

Then the part where God and religion become entangled for all practical purposes in the hopelessly convoluted nature of human interactions that are pulled and tugged in any number of ambivalent directions when we attempt to pin down when genes end and memes begin.

Instead, we have the FFOs among us who insist it is ever and always their own [and only their own] understanding of the tumultuous conflicts between nature and nurture that count.

For example, how far Christian anti-semitism caused Nazi anti-semitism is something we could spend a long time investigating, precisely because of the openness to interpretation of wide landscapes of historical data.

The final solution wrapped around the mother of all ironies...that any number or German Christians embraced the death camps even though the God they worshipped and adored was a Jew Himself!!

A further omission in Dawkins’ claim that religion is harmful is glaringly obvious from a philosophical standpoint: the claim seems to have little if any base in ethical theory. Further, Dawkins makes clear his dislike of moral absolutism. Does this mean that his claim that religion is harmful is a relative truth? If we have no basis for our ethical thinking, how can we argue that killing for your country is good, but for your religion is bad, or visa versa?

And, again, given the vast and varied historical and cultural contexts in which all manner of conflicting social, political and economic variables become entangled in all manner of conflicting religious denominations...? Good and bad moral philosophies here can be embraced all up and down the moral and political spectrum.

In fact, the more you distant yourself from ethics theoretically the more obvious it becomes that one size does not fit all. Not even close to it.

[iambiguous]

Between Dawkins & God
John Holroyd negotiates a middle way between these two much-lauded figures.

The issue of the selection of evidence is also a key weakness in Dawkins’ case. He gives umpteen anecdotes rather than hard data.

Think Satyr and the "evidence" he provides over at ILP and KT in regard to race. Anecdotes lifted straight from social media -- Twitter/X -- showing black men and women behaving badly. Really, really, really badly. And we're expected to believe that they behave as they do "naturally"...genetically. And yet if their behaviors do revolve around biological imperatives, how can we hold them responsible?

Same with religion. For some it results in a lot of good things. But they are good things that others insist are actually bad things.

But why not also look at evidence that might suggest that religion can be beneficial? We might look at the role of religion in the American civil rights movement for example. Or we could consider the work of Christian Aid, Tear Fund and CAFOD, or that Christians motivated significantly by their faith helped finally make slavery illegal in Britain and elsewhere.

Again, that's how it works...historically, culturally, personally. We take out of Christianity what we first put into it: our own rooted existentially in dasein "self". Then the part where some note this...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fires
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... ore_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

...while others rationalize it by invoking God's "mysterious ways". And, after all, if moral Commandments, immortality and salvation are important to you, then, ultimately, God explains everything.

There’s no question that Christians, even Quakers owned slaves; but my point is that the picture is not simple. We simply cannot bite off a chunk of reality like religion, and say ‘bad’. If we do, we do more than intellectual harm, we do social harm too.

On the other hand...

"The Society of Friends (known as the Quakers) became involved in political and social movements during the eighteenth century. In particular, they were the first religious movement to condemn slavery and would not allow their members to own slaves."

Or, perhaps, I am biased because my own daughter graduated from Friends here in Baltimore?

[iambiguous]

On another thread, a reference was made to St. Jude's hospital for kids.

"More than 70 years ago, Danny Thomas was a young entertainer with a baby on the way. Work wasn't easy to come by, and his despair grew. He turned to St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of hopeless causes, and vowed: Show me my way in life, and I will build you a shrine." St. Jude

Not many folks aren't committed to ending the suffering of children. On the other hand, if He does exist, it is the Christian God Himself who brought into existence the terrible afflictions that cause the suffering in the first place.

Still, I wish that somehow I could figure out a way to believe in Him again. Why? Because in a No God world the suffering of children is just another manifestation of an essentially meaningless and purposeless human existence.

So, come on, Christians, link me to the most potent evidence you have come upon that He does exist. And give it your best shot regarding why on Earth the Christian God did create all of these terrible afflictions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... _disorders

Next up: Shriners Hospital