Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Jun 03, 2023 1:37 pm
What he has in common with IC is that they are both here to influence, and convert, folks to their way of thinking. Neither seems to be having much success. They are both intelligent and well capable of employing logic, but some aspects of what they are trying to promote are not logically defensible, so they just have to make the best of it. They are both reluctant to be explicit in what they want us to believe, presumably because of its unpalatability, so they try to guide us into coming to certain conclusions on our own. Alexis's put-downs are intended to shame and embarrass us into some kind of submission, but that doesn't really work on those that relish a good old forum punch-up.
Encapsulation, or the attempt at it, is a valuable exercise. What you've written here is intelligible. And because it actually deals in the realm of ideas I can comment productively.
I cannot speak
for IC, though his efforts to seem to involve a desire (really a command, no?) to help people convert to having a relationship to Jesus and to avoid *hell*. He has said as much.
However, IC is also involved in many other categories of ideas related to 'conservatism'.
I am not interested in converting you or anyone and this has never been my purpose which I have stated continually. My purpose is
somewhat selfish: I want and need to get clear about where I stand in relation to important issues and controversies that reign in our present. And this explains why I have presented so much criticism of your *position* Harbal, such as it is.
Intelligence and *logic* are on one side of the equation, that is true, but no one of these determine what I think is better understood to be something like *orientation* or *perspective*. These depend on hermeneutical issues.
My understanding is that the larger differences that get expressed in these pages, and on this forum, have to do with far larger issues and these are cultural, intellectual, also religious (dealing with the interior content and meaning with which religion is involved), and all of this in a shifting and rather dangerous present, which is being determined by movements and trends that are difficult to identify. (For example when I have referred to James Lindsay's work and his cultural and intellectual critique).
In some sense though I think you are right: I am more on IC's *side* (if I can put it like this) than I am on your side (which I define as a negation of
intellectus to use my preferred term). I suppose it fair to say that I remain more *pluralistic* and more flexible in numerous areas when compared to IC.
But note that I am not interested in *converting* people. How could I convert when, as it certainly seems to be the case, I am not convinced what it is needed to be converted
to.
However, in relation to everything that has been discussed in this thread note the following:
I do not reject what I understand to be the inner content, the inner meaning, the inner message of what I understand Christianity (and of course Catholicism which is earlier and more relevant than its Protestant evolution) to be involved as presenting, representing and upholding. I am therefore in a peculiar conundrum where critique and opposition exist side-by-side with the *assent* I refer to often.
In relation to all of this I have become aware that many here -- I use a you-plural -- are locked out of the possibility of understanding what I say here. That is my
interpretation however.
Therefore if I do anything at all it is to defend a sort of *ramp* to a position or point where what I am on about becomes intelligible.
Very different from *trying to convert*!
Alexis's put-downs are intended to shame and embarrass us into some kind of submission, but that doesn't really work on those that relish a good old forum punch-up.
I have certainly used phrasing to point to your deficiencies -- absolutely! And I retract none of it. But at each juncture I have clearly stated that I am making larger references to cultural trends generally.
My critique of Atto's subjectivity, though related, was enunciated in different terms. I do not think you even care to parse the difference out.