Jesus or Buddha
Which one of these two men do you think brought the best and most honest message? I have divided opinions... Before I thought Jesus was in a league of his own, but the more I see how disgusting I find some christian writings(even early writings) I am starting to feel that much of it is based on hatred. Not that Jesus was based on hatred, but I do not see that christianity is what it pretends to be: A religion of forgiveness and love. On the other hand, Christ felt more alive than Buddha, in the sense that he spoke about eternal life and love to ones neighbour, and he spoke about God as if God is a Person. This means that the highest value in christianity is personhood. But once again, when reading early writings from for example the apostlic fathers who lived in the early 2nd century, I find much of their teaching disgusting. There, one is forgiven at maximum once. If one fails, one goes to be tortured forever. What kind of vision of God is that? Then, frankly, if christianity was true, life ought not to be. Life then is a penal camp, a horrendous nightmare. Buddha seems much more realistic in this sense. He doesn't speak as much about reward and punishment, and you can always make up for your mistakes. Life doesn't end when you fail so to say. In christianity, if you fail when you know the truth, God is out to get you. Buddha doesn't even need a God. Also, Buddha stands above and beyond good and evil. The evil man who curses him is like a man who tries to spit at a cloud, but instead of reaching the cloud, the spit goes right back at him. Christians are obsessed with the division between sheep and goats. There, if one "spits" at God, then God will cast you in to a lake of fire. So, in my opinion, the "reward" in christianity is greater than the reward in buddhism, but the punishment is far far worse and makes the reward not worth it it seems to me. Also, christians are often more superstitious. Yeah... I see when I write that it seems like I lean towards buddhism. But I don't know. What are your thoughts?
Comments (520)
May I ask you:
Quoting Beebert
What's disgusting in those writings and what are you referring to?
Quoting Beebert
What teaching is disgusting?
Quoting Beebert
Sure sure, but you have to first figure out what "failing" means, and also what this "eternal torture" refers to.
Quoting Beebert
What's the justification for this claim?
Quoting Beebert
No religion apart from Christianity has the person of Jesus Christ. It is the person of Jesus Christ that is the centre of Christianity.
1.What is the relation between predestination and election on the one hand, and God's omnipotence and omniscience on the other? If God foreknew my fate, then why did he create me if my fate is eternal hell?
2. What is eternal hell?
3. Why did Christ speak about an eternal and unforgivable sin without really clarifying what it really is? It has brought tremendous suffering to many in the world.
4. If God foreknew the fall of man, why did he create man? And if he foreknew the damnation of many, why did he create them? To display his wrath? IF that is true, then having children is the most wicked action imaginable. One ought then to prevent life IMO.
In order for you to understand really what my implications are, then I suggest you read this "article" written by Arthur Schopenhauer. He expresses my views better than I can:
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/religion/chapter6.html
How can you have a choice in creation before you exist in the first place? :s
What is the wish about heaven BTW? Isn't life and all its sufferings here enough? Can't one just accept them? Why would some sort of a judgement where the wicked suffer and the righteous prosper be something that justifies everything? TO me it makes everything worse. And eternal night of sleep without dreams seems like a perfect end of life to me. Where is God justified in he holocaust? If he is behind it, he is evil. Even if he foreknew it he is evil IMO. Where did the jews who were executed go? Heaven or hell? Hell according to most christians. Now, read the article by Schopenhauer if you want. It is a good one. And also, if you can give me some good arguments for christianity, then I am all ears. I listen. I wouldn't mind if it were true as long as God doesn't threaten me with eternal torture
You cannot create a valid conditional around a necessarily impossible hypothesis.
Quoting Beebert
A little puny ass human crying about stuff. What did God answer Job? Who do you think you are to question God's decisions? Do you think you have the wisdom required to know whether what God did was good or bad?
Quoting Beebert
I'm not sure, only God knows what is in their hearts.
Quoting Beebert
No, this is just false. I don't know what Christians you met, but most Christians would not affirm this.
Quoting Beebert
I will read it in due time, I'm a bit busy at the moment.
Quoting Beebert
So is Christian literary writing of the same value as Scripture or Tradition?
Quoting Beebert
Quite a vindictive one I'd say, but who told you that they are not forgiven? Scripture makes it clear that the only unforgiveable sin is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and that's not because God cannot forgive it, but rather that someone who has committed it doesn't want to be forgiven anymore.
Quoting Beebert
That's false.
Quoting Beebert
There is no predestination and election.
Quoting Beebert
God may know, but it's still your choice. Hell will not be forced on you. You will take yourself to hell out of your own will. Perhaps you're already doing it by agonising over this.
Quoting Beebert
According to Eastern Orthodox tradition of which I am a member, eternal hell is the same as eternal heaven - being in the presence of God. So if you hate God, you will experience God's Love as a burning fire. If you love God, you'll experience it as bliss.
https://oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/spirituality/the-kingdom-of-heaven/heaven-and-hell
Quoting Beebert
He did clarify what it is. It is blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, which essentially means perceiving the Holy Ghost to be Satan. That's what the Pharisees whom He condemned were doing - they attributed the works of Jesus, to Satan. So if when God speaks to you, you perceive Him as Satan, then you can never be saved, since you'll naturally hate God (thinking that he is Satan) and seek to run away from Him. Basically some people become so twisted by their immorality, that they perceive evil to be good - then nothing can be done to save them.
Quoting Beebert
I don't know. But if you have faith in God then you can trust that God had good reason to do it.
Quoting Beebert
God doesn't threaten you, rather you threaten yourself. God is Love - the only question is if you will accept that Love and not run away from it. God won't send you to hell. If you end up there, it will be because you want to be there. For example, if you're in love with immorality, then you won't want to be in Heaven.
God wanted me to exist. Why? If I don't want to exist, what is God's reason for bringing me into existence if he foreknows that I don't want it. Suicide is condemned in christianity(perhaps not in orthodoxy) as the worst of all sins. That too I can not accept.
The sheperd of Hermas was even considered as canonical scripture by many of the church fathers, such as Irenaeus and Origen. It is contained within The Apostolic Fathers, so it has mighty importance.
You say there is no election and predestination? Well... That seems strange. Because in Scripture I find 25 places that speaks about election, and 5-6 places that talks about predestination. I also find a horrifying text from Paul in Romans 9 where he talks about how God creates some people in order to destroy them. And in Hebrews I find the same teaching as in the Sheperd of Hermas; those who fall away can never be forgiven, even if they want to.
You say the unforgivable sin is to believe that God is evil. Well, then it seems like I have committed it. You say that heaven and hell is the same place where God's love is responded to in different ways. How does that corresponds to scriptural words such as "punishment", "wrath", "vengeance", "retribution" etc? It seems rather to be wishful thinking? I find only a few verses in he bible that says God is love. Generally, the bible seems to say to me: "Love others and I will love you. Believe in Christ's sacrifice, and I will love you wretched sinner. Not because I love you really, but because I love my son. Now. Go love all your neighbours and enemies. If you don't I will cast you in that lake of fire along with your enemies." Even if you would experience God as Satan, why can't you be forgiven? Nothing is supposed to be impossible with God. No, in Scripture it is clear. God doesn't WANT to forgive them. "Shall never be forgiven" it says. Why. Because he is "Guilty of an eternal sin". Falling away in early christianity seems to have been equal to blasphemy against the holy spirit. This seems to me to be mind control and will to power. I fear christianity is true. But I must admit: Nothing in my life has made me so miserable and suicidal as the belief in the Christian God.
You said most christians would NOT agree that non-christians go to hell? hmm... That is not what I have seen. Neither among christians of today nor among the christians in history. If one is honest to what scripture and tradition has taught, the majority of the Jews were cast into a fire. That is a psychotic belief it seems to me. If I walk on the street thinking that the majority of the people there will go to hell (The gate is narrow as Christ says), then I get a panic attack. I was at a psychiatric hospital for a month because of this horrendous belief. It drove me to madness. I can't take it anymore. Show me the goodness of christianity. I can't find it anymore.
Regarding if I have the wisdom to say whether what God did was good or bad: He has given me the capacity to see what I see. And the conclusions I make of what he has revealed to me is that the world is a catastrophic mess.
BTW. Is Jehovah in the old testament the God of Jesus? Of course he is... Do you find the God who slaughtered the Amalekites, who wanted to stone homosexuals and women who had lost their virginity before their wedding to be Love? One really has to twist one's mind in order to say that it seems to me.
(Y) Ok, wish you the best of luck with your search. It is not easy, but the things worth having are often difficult to obtain. The Spirit will guide you on how to interpret and understand the things you read. And perhaps it may help to talk to someone you trust about these things, if you haven't already done so that is. Peace.
Best? Too vague.
Jesus is the more passionate, but Gautama is the cooler customer.
Most honest?
According to the Gospels, Jesus was sometimes quite evasive (such as whether or not he was King of the Jews), but he was honest in the sense that he could not be intimidated easily.
There is an honesty in both of them having renounced a lot of the things that tend to corrupt people (e.g. wealth).
I think where you are coming from is that it is uncomfortable to see that God is Just, and not only loving. From the Christian Scripture, we can find that God is perfect, he cannot tolerate sin. In order to be able to accept us sinners, he sent his son, Christ, to take the punishment we deserved so that we may be justified in his sight. As for no forgiveness after the initial acceptance of this, I am not sure where that would be found in the Scripture, but I have not seen it. Those who refuse to accept this salvation condemn themselves; just as a prisoner who refuses to allows someone to pay bail will stay in prison. In the topic of predestination and election, I have not found a clear answer, but right now I think it means that we cannot control the consequences of our actions. We cannot remain unjustified and go to heaven at the same time. I believe that Christianity is true.
I know God is just. I just don't understand what is just with creating me sick and demanding me to be healthy under the threats of eternal torture. Not just punishment for a few years. Not even punishment for thousands of years. But forever!! For eternity! That is insane. I just can't wrap my head around how that is just when I had NO saying in all this in the first place. Would you mind to read the article by Arthur Schopenhauer and see what you think about it? Because in him I have found a soulmate as to what I find are the problems with Christian dogmas... So perhaps, if you can give me a respond to your opinion on those comments that he makes, perhaps that could clear some things up for me? I too believe christianity is true. But I don't have faith. I don't believe Jesus wants me to be near him. No matter how much scripture says so. Believe me. I have prayed myself insane before. I have screamed to God to please help me to believe. I have begged and pleaded for mercy and forgiveness. But all I feel afterwards is an intense fear. A fear of a wrathful, angry and vengeful judge who hates me because of my filth. But he created me. That makes me angry at him instead. So angry that I soon want to sin willfully and spit in his face. Yes. I am apparently a great blasphemer. But where is he? Why doesn't he care when I beg him to grant me faith?
It is not at all surprising that a religion that offered a way to eternal life would attract dissenters who thought the gate was way too open. That's just people for you. "That's just too good a deal, must be something wrong with it."
There is a gap (mind the gap!) between the man Jesus and all writings about Jesus, by Christians, and others. How long was the gap? 20 to 80 years at least. Paul's writings were first, but Paul had not met Jesus. The lives of the disciples and those who followed jesus (apart from the 12) are largely unrecorded. The people who wrote about Jesus and assembled the writings that make up the New Testament are separated in time and place from Jesus.
The editors of the NT took what writings they had, related it to oral traditions that existed in the very early church (which congealed after the death of Jesus), and referenced material in the older books of Jewish religion. There are writings that were excluded because they didn't seem appropriate, relevant, or consistent. The book of Revelations, for instance, was a contentious addition (if I remember from past study).
The most reliable material we have about Jesus is in the New Testament. Take it or leave it.
My guess is that most enduring religious movements began in the dark -- that is, no one was taking notes at the time. A man was inspired and preached--Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tse, Jesus... others. People who heard shared and remembered, perhaps for several generations. A religious practice developed around the remembered and shared preaching. Eventually what was remembered was written down, and informal practices became official: A religion emerges.
All that aside, what in the Gospels makes you think Christianity was based on hatred?
What in the gospels? Not much in the gospels except perhaps the seperation between the sheep and the goats and the casting into eternal fire all those who disobeyed God. Why not just annihilate them? It sort of contradicts the teaching in the sermon on the mount it seems. The sermon of the mount I first found to be the most profound teaching I had ever heard. But it was very much influenced by the Christianity of Dostoevsky. Now afterwards I have learned the Dostoevsky's christian vision wasn't that biblical. But I much much much prefers his vision of christianity to that of traditional dogmatic christianity and even to the christianity I find in the New Testament. Anyway. What more do I find based on hatred? The talking about the elect chosen by God before the foundation of the world... It sort of seems like the writers sometimes wants to revenge the jews. But if you want to speak about what I really find detestable in the New Testament, it is the Revelation of John. That is the most vengeful piece of writing I have ever read. And when I read it, I torn the pages of it to pieces. It destroyed my view of Christ that I had received from Dostoevsky. Other than that, I find not much hatred in the New Testament. I think it is the combination of the teachings there with much of The Old Testament that brings me problems also... And I have more problems with teachers of Christianity like John Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Jonathan Edwards than with the New Testament itself.
I think it's a misreading, although a very persuasive and deep-seated one. It comes from generations of Christian preachers, for whom 'God' is the ultimate authority figure, along with the metaphor of 'reward and punishment' which appeals to basic human instincts to instill discipline amongst the congregation - to 'maintain the flock'.
In traditional Buddhism, there is also hell - actually, hells, plural, some hot, some cold, all of them depicted in terms that make Heironymous Bosch paintings look relatively benign. Nobody is 'sent' to those hells by God, because there is no God passing judgement on the 'souls of men'; they go there solely because of what they have done, as a consequence of evil karma. But they go there regardless; not forever, as nothing is forever, but for 'aeons of kalpas', which in Buddhist cosmology, is an unthinkably long duration of time.
I think the whole problem you have is that you understand 'God' as a kind of chief executive officer, the head of the chain of command, the commandant or headmaster, who makes and sends and so on. That is all anthropomorphism in my view. Religious language is often metaphorical, and all of those are metaphors.
My feeling about some Christians is that they are more interested in finding a way to assign people to hell than they are to get people into heaven.
The basis of the Final Judgement is in Matthew: "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."
That's it. Be merciful to those who are suffering.
I feel for you. Do know, there are wonderful and compassionate Christian teachers, from many kinds of schools. Have a careful read of this title.
Originally, we were created perfect and had no need of justification. But through one man sin entered the world, and we all became sinners with him, and lost our perfection. God knows that you can never reclaim that perfection, which is why he sent Christ. It was a legal obligation; we sent ourselves to prison, and he offered to pay the price to redeem us. He could not be a god of perfection and justice if he let us run rampant in our lawlessness. You did somewhat have a say in it; if you have never committed a sin that would be different. Have you ever lied or stolen? That is enough to cause us to lack the necessary perfection. We are not condenmed because we refuse to believe that Christ died and resurected, but because we have sinned and refuse to allow him to get you out of it. You chose to separate yourself from God, and he chose to offer a way back.
I completely understand how you feel, I felt the same way. You do not know how many times I was in fear of that God of Justice, and very repentent. But I was trying to get to him through my own works, and not through Christ. I do not alway have a great deal of faith, but it is much stronger now than when I first believed. I also cried out the same cries that you are screaming, and I have found it to be a matter of lack of trust. God doesn't leave us unless we shove him off.
Of the article, it is wrong, but understandable. It makes the assumption that man would have been good, but God forced him to be bad. We choose to sin because we have free will. God cannot be good and bad at the same time.
Anyhoo...
I think it's worth noting that it's not so much Jesus vs. the Buddha that you're asking after, but rather purported teachings of Jesus vs. purported teachings of the Buddha. Neither of them wrote anything down, so judging exactly what they believed in and taught is pretty speculative. The best we can do is piece together a coherent theosophy, which is exactly what all the many Christian sects have attempted to do. Even Buddhism is quite varied and differing in belief and practice.
That said, I think Jesus, as I've come to understand him, is the more powerful and illuminating figure, though I admit to not having studied the Buddha and Buddhism as closely as Jesus and Christianity.
I am a baptized, confirmed Christian, though I have spent decades stewing over how much of the Christian creed I can honestly say. I'm 70. The whole business is still very conflicted.
I do believe Jesus was born 9 months after a conventional conception, lived somewhere in Galilee, and at some point was inspired and preached a compelling message to Jews. He probably was crucified because he had become a pain to the local authorities. His literal resurrection from the dead is something of a problem. I am not altogether sure about God, either. Why the uncertainty? Oh, it's the other believers who make faith difficult, don't you know. They say such crazy things, sometimes.
Quoting Beebert
Edward Schillebeeckx [a Catholic theologian, died in 2009] offers a provocative comment on the Matthean judgment scene: “I believe - and I say this with some hesitation - that at the last judgment perhaps everyone will stand at the right-hand side of the Son of Man: 'Come all you beloved people, blessed of the Father, for despite all your inhumanity, you once gave a glass of water when I was in need. Come!'”
Awesome movie. I got to play Ciaphas on stage years ago.
Both sets of teaching seem to express philosophical ideas that were new, but present in the culture of the time, and the current popular interpretations of either set of texts also reflect the morality and values of our time. If anything, Buddhism is taught as the cool alternative to western thought. Don't get me wrong. There is value in loving your neighbor, and in getting out of your head and stopping judging everything. There is value in looking for the middle way or in forgiveness. That's one of the reasons why those religions have stuck around for so long.
That statement by the catholic theologian you mentioned is a similar one to what Fyodor Dostoevsky made! He said quite the same thing haha
That's sort of a weird question to answer. The strictly rational answer is "nothing". I see nothing to make me believe that there is any god, so I don't.
Like with most things, there's a more complicated answer too. I was raised a Christian. I believed, but I did notice things that didn't seem to fit into the conception of the world that I'd been taught. I also realized that the things that we now call "mythology", were once called religion, and believed as fervently as our current religions. It seems obvious to us now that Zeus was a superstitious way to explain lightning, personifying something we don't understand. It didn't take much to put two and two together from there and realize that Christianity (or Buddhism, or Islam...) fits into the paradigm of mythology as easily as the Greek or Norse pantheons do. It didn't happen all at once, because we tend to invest our personalities and senses of identity into religion, so it's harder to just let go of. But over the course of years, I just let go of a little bit at a time. Now, I'm as "unreligious" as a person can be.
Right. Well, none of these guys died for your sins. But they occasionally had good things to say. Like Luther: “Be a sinner and sin?? boldly,? but believe and?? rejoice in Christ even more boldly.”
If they bother you, then leave them alone. One can give a good reading of the entire Bible without consulting Calvin, Luther, or Augustine.
I don't know what to call the beliefs i hold now. What do you call a dog of many different breeds? A mutt? I was raised Catholic with 12 years of religious school, so i don't think the Christianity would go away even if i tried. And that's ok. What i mentioned before about Enlightenment and the Holy Spirit being real, is as real as i have ever found any "thing" to be, for what it is worth. Also the Tao Te Ching has given much guidance and clarity.
Are you around college age perhaps? I ask because i think i could have written posts similar to yours here when i was about 19, including the Bible reading, fear of hell, and Dostoevsky influence. Good Fyodor knew suffering, and redemption too. What is your favorite work of his?
(btw, there have been several helpful recent threads on depression that you may or may not have seen, including this.)
(Y) Great quote. Joseph Campbell did all he could to make "myth" not a bad word concerning beliefs.
Good ones! Both your quote and Luther's. (Y)
This is a valuable insight; I think you have the key here already, within all of your trepidations and frustrations. How could personhood be the highest value if sin sends someone to eternal conscious torment? Christianity has missed the importance of the person, of personality. The idea of eternal conscious torment is dehumanizing; it begins with man in a state of total depravity. The problem with this is there's no reference, within basic human experience, for why this is, or what it's measured against. Sin originally has the connotation of "missing the mark". But the way Christianity unfolded in history assigned a normative toxic shame to sin, and, therefore, to all of life; all aspects. The typical Christian ethos is one embroiled in shame and subsequent virtue-signaling. Shame creates an entire culture of pathological play-acting. But none of this has to do with the crux of the actual Gospel. There are other interpretations. Christus Victor places Christ as the victorious hero conquering sin and death; it's a cosmic battle that's already been won. If Christianity had adopted this view of the Gospel as it's basis, then the culture of shame that embroils it wouldn't exist.
Ultimately, toxic shame eats away at the sacredness of that personhood that you expressed. I personally think that personhood (I would say personality or individuality) is the highest value of Christianity precisely because Christ was God incarnated in an individual person. The sheer depth of symbolical significance of that fact, within the context of history, is staggering. It creates a connection between God and man; man has a need for God, but God also has a need for man. The notion that man's need for God is not reciprocated for need on God's end is nonsensical. Man has zero value if God does not assign value to him, and God cannot assign value to man without having a need. Any value assigned without need would be purely theoretical; value means need.
What all of this has to do with organized religion is anathema to me, at this point. I've had similar experiences to what you describe. I also resonate with the feeling of having "lost faith", and yet still finding belief in Christ to exist within myself. I've had a long, painful journey of coming to terms with these contradictory experiences, but to come to the realization that a belief exists, deeply within me, a belief in Christ, despite everything, has been a huge comfort. I sense that you're wrestling in possibly a similar way. There's a name for our ilk; "Doubting Thomas". Just think about the depth of Thomas's faith after having seen the wounds of Jesus with his own eyes. This is the beauty of our doubt; it leads us into deeper Truth. Keep it up.
If you're interested in Buddhism, take time to read up on it. I myself have benefitted greatly from studying Buddhism and practicing Buddhist meditation. There's a lot of published material available nowadays, but as good a starting point as any is http://www.accesstoinsight.org - click on the 'self-guided tour to Buddha's teachings'.
Overall the Christian doctrine that I think most of is the notion of 'evil as deprivation of the good'. That is, evil has no real being of its own, in the same way that darkness is the absence of light.
I think the corollary of this is that hell is the fate of those who seek what is less than good, what is corrupted or lacking; having had the opportunity of seeking the very best, the highest truth, instead they have declined that and sought for something of far less worth. For this they're not 'sent' to hell - they choose it. Hence, 'doors locked on the inside'.
Yes. I struggle with this constantly; it's the question of exactly how much spiritual responsibility is placed on the individual. Is it a set amount, regardless of the person? Does it depend on their lot in life ("to whom much is given...")? Now, how much does human freedom play into that situation? If hell is "locked form the inside", is that state purely a result of the failings of the person who finds themselves there? Or is it something pre-determined? If total freedom exists, then it's purely the responsibility of the individual to attain heaven and avoid the so-called "self-chosen" hell; but if this is the case, how is this more realistic or humane than a hell in which judgement is based on action (i.e. right-action vs. sin)? Because now, suddenly, regardless of which view of hell one is espousing, action is once again the determining factor. In the "soft" view of hell that Lewis and you are suggesting, action still determines destiny. One still has to, for one's own sake, act rightly in order to achieve heaven. Not for the sake of pleasing God, but just for one's own sake. The responsibility is purely on you. This is a problem. And by the way, I'm using "action" broadly here; it would include metaphysical actions like "thoughts", feelings, motivations, etc.
But the attitude I'm trying to argue against, is that view of 'God' as being like a manager or superintendent, who then vindictively sends souls to hell, knowing all along that this would be their fate. That seems to be a logical consequence of Calvinism and the 'total depravity' idea. But my view is that Calvin and Luther were both highly un-self-aware. They deeply confused the symbolic with the actual, and had no sense of irony or humour. That is why I prefer Dogen and Lin Chi and their like.
Hui Neng, Legendary Sixth Patriarch of Zen
I do feel this; this is one side of why I feel conflicted here. The other side is that some circumstances are not in one's control. Is this more of what avidya means, then? For instance, child abuse, whether overt or covert. I was extremely sheltered, for instance, as a child. Not my own doing. The problem here is, someone with a generally healthy upbringing would seem to be better equipped to be responsible for herself, than someone with an unhealthy upbringing. Maybe I'm generalizing or simplifying. But this still seems to be the tension, to me. I want to believe that we're each responsible for ourselves, but is this, then, a set reality for all of humanity? It would seem that circumstance dictates exactly how responsible a given person can be for themselves. A drug addict on the street, for instance; I live in the city, as I seem to recall you do as well. Do we tell them they are responsible for their actions? Thus telling them they are wholly responsible for the pariah state they're now living in? Where does charity fit in with responsibility? Here's the problem for me: many people never realize that "at every moment, one still has the option to act differently to how karma would dictate", as you say. The kid my age or younger who stands outside of McDonalds every day on my way to work, asking for change for food...does he know that, at every moment of his life of begging, he can act differently, thus changing his own karma?
A long time back, I was fortunate enough to have attended some self-awareness training. One of the things I observed is a lot of people who had had traumatic experiences that were binding them in some way, that they were encountering through the training this group was offering. Often for those people, remembering or realising these experiences would be very traumatic. There were often tears, although no overt conflict or strife. (Having very skilled facilitators helped in that.) That is the precise meaning of 'catharsis'. That is the work we all have to do, by some means or another. Unfortunately in our culture it is hardly understood at all; as I say, I consider myself lucky to have encountered it.
Quoting Noble Dust
Not outright, because that would just appear, to them, as another straight asshole hassling them. But I think any kind of therapy or treatment would require them to acknowledge that they have a problem, and that they would have to own it and accept therapy. If they don't, they don't. We can't change other people, we can try and help them where possible. Our responsibility is to know ourselves and be able to act wisely, that is, not out of some program or other, and not out of some hidden hurt. That is what Jung meant by the work of 'individuation', and it has to be done.
The big problem with many Christians is purely and simply lack of insight. As Joseph Campbell well knew, myths are metaphors, often for truths that can't be told directly. So of course the Christian mythos is profoundly meaningful and significant, but I think nowadays often totally misinterpreted. No more so than with fundamentalism, which completely misunderstands the meaning of myth. So for those, like myself, that have never believed that the Bible was literally true, the fact that it's not literally true is not significant. Whereas for the fundamentalist, if the literal truth is challenged, this appears as 'the devil', a complete threat to their worldview, and they react accordingly.
Another Augustine quote:
From The Literal Meaning of Genesis. Applies to all creationism, in my view.
Right. My problem here is that not everyone has access to this sort of thing. So, my questions remain in a philosophical realm (ironic for me). Assuming everyone doesn't have access to this sort of treatment, the question still remains; how much spiritual responsibility is reasonably placed on the individual?
Quoting Wayfarer
Fair enough; well taken.
That Augustine quote is ironically applicable to the present state of christendom.
Christianity is not a myth, as I've explained to you in the other thread.
Did you read the fine print of what Wayfarer was describing as "myth" here?
What do you guys think about this? Probable or superstitious?
(Y) Excellent, thank you. Yes, The Brothers Karamozov is his masterpiece. Have you seen the 1958 film? Highly abridged from the novel of course, but full of its spirit, character, music, and tensions. Movies like that and Becket, On the Waterfront, Mutiny on the Bounty(all versions), Spartacus, Ben-Hur, A Lion in Winter, Billy Budd, and other various ones like V For Vendetta, Contact, The Last Unicorn, Schindlers List, Koyanisqattsi, The Lord of the Rings, Pink Floyd's The Wall, and The Song Remains the Same really helped me through the existential crisis, philosophical and spiritual questions, and irrational guilt. It is better now, but of course questions remain. Such is life. But it feels like sailing the ocean rather than drowning in it. May you find the same in your own way.
About the self, this seems to be a helpful quote from Dogen:
Studying the Buddha way is studying oneself. Studying oneself is forgetting oneself. Forgetting oneself is being enlightened by all things. Being enlightened by all things is to shed the body-mind of oneself, and those of others. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this traceless enlightenment continues endlessly.
Sorry, but have you actually read Job? I know many people on the internet say that, but have you read the actual text?
The impression I get from this answer is quite different. God doesn't tell Job that he is right, and suffering has no meaning. God tells Job that his entire protestation is vain and meaningless, since Job cannot possibly hope to comprehend God, and he has no right at all to tell God what is good and what is bad. Job must just play his role - he has no capacity to raise himself above God and dare to question God. God is Creator, He alone decides what is Right and Good. God shames Job by testing his knowledge, and showing how puny and insignificant it is - how insignificant Job ultimately is. And Job understands it - he understands that he must have faith in God, because God knows better than he himself knows what is good.
Quoting Beebert
I don't see this in the text. On the contrary, God says He didn't screw anything up.
Quoting Beebert
I don't know, but I'm sure He must have a purpose.
Quoting Beebert
Why can't you accept it? And it's not condemned as the worst of sins, it's just a sin. Suicide isn't the unforgiveable sin.
Quoting Beebert
Bullshit. One Church father considering something canonical doesn't mean it really is. There's a reason why it's not in the Bible. Synods and Ecumenical Councils decide such matters, not lonely church fathers...
Quoting Beebert
Please quote specific passages which disturb you. You don't have to quote 25. Give me 5 of the most disturbing ones according to you.
Quoting Beebert
Impossible, if you had committed it, you wouldn't be agonising over it. People who commit the unforgiveable sin don't commit it only with their minds, but rather with their HEARTS - they hate God and goodness so much that they perceive evil to be good, and good to be evil. It's not an easy thing to do. You will never accidentally commit this sin - there is no such thing.
Quoting Beebert
Perfectly! People who hate God will experience it as "wrath", "vengeance", etc.
Quoting Beebert
That's just false. Jesus Christ wouldn't have accepted to come to Earth, be mocked, humiliated, and killed by undeserving twats if He didn't love us.
Quoting Beebert
You can be forgiven, if you WANT to be forgiven, but if you get to that stage, then you don't want to be forgiven anymore.
Quoting Beebert
Nothing is impossible for God, that's absolutely true, however God doesn't want to break you free will - that's His decision. If you freely decide that you prefer hell to heaven, that's where you shall go! God will not stop you.
Quoting Beebert
Give me the full quote with context please.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, that's because you have the wrong idea of God. God doesn't want to punish you, or anyone. The history of man is the history of the FLIGHT FROM GOD - man is desperately running away from God, and God is in full pursuit of man because He loves him. It's not God that punishes man, but rather man that punishes himself.
Quoting Beebert
Then they are wrong. The Scriptures do not say that men have the authority or the wisdom to decide or state with certainty who goes to hell and who doesn't. It seems you want to make yourself God and have authority over what happens - you think your intellect is sufficiently powerful to know these things - that's absolute foolishness. Know your own finitude!
Quoting Beebert
Yeah, well why do you think that? Do you think you're capable to decipher what is in all those people's hearts, and see whether they will go to heaven or hell? Only God knows such matters.
Quoting Beebert
You have the wrong belief. You believe God wants to punish you and mankind for our sins. You believe God had to sacrifice His Son, otherwise He could not forgive you, unless there was blood, because He is a Just God. Perhaps Scripture should then have said that God is Justice. But it didn't - it said God is Love. God's Love and Mercy are greater than His Justice. Jesus Christ died for your sins so that you could be purified and join God in union with Him. Jesus's death and Resurrection was performed in order to make man divine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divinization_(Christian)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosis_(Eastern_Christian_theology)
For more.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, that is indeed what you think. But the capacities you have are minuscule and insignificant. How dare you pretend to know that it is catastrophic? What is 1000 years to God? Nothing. You don't even know what will happen tomorrow, much less 10,000 years from now. Your intellectual powers should tell you first and foremost that they are weak and incapable to see very far.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, He absolutely is.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, I actually do. And by the way, these are mostly misrepresentations. Women caught in adultery were meant to be stoned ALONG WITH THE MAN only if there were witnesses to the act itself. This is part of the Covenant made with the Jewish people, and it wasn't meant to be eternal - these were rules that were to be applied only during that time, which was a very difficult time for the Jewish people. You should read this book:
https://www.amazon.com/God-Behaving-Badly-Testament-Sexist/dp/0830838260
By the way, what you're spouting off isn't even Christianity, it's tradition. You're encountering the tradition of men, not actual Apostolic Tradition, the writings of the Saints, and Scripture. Many of the things most people think they know about Christianity are actually completely false.
Which "fine print" are you talking about? :s
They are stupid, and they should be ashamed of themselves if you want to know the truth. They think they can know the mind of God :s Give me a break.
One can speculate that such might be the case, but to say so definitely is the sign of stupidity. And I for one don't think such is the case - there is nothing in the Bible to showcase this.
I like you view on christianity I must say, and would like very much if you told me more about it. It seems interesting. I hope you are right that what I reject is the tradition of men and that most people don't know about true christianity...
Passages that disturbe me? All the passages in the gospels that speak about the unforgivable sin. I think it is in either Mark 3 or Matthew 12 that Jesus says that he who blasphemes the spirit never has forgiveness/shall never be forgiven but is guilty of an eternal sin.
I also have problems with ALL the passages that speak about election. There are plenty in the gospels. Others than that, out of the top of my head, I have problems with Romans 8 and 9. And Hebrews 6, 10 and 12 or 13.
Thanks. I think I have heard of too many fundamentalists. They most be a really serious problem for christianity...
Well we've already gone over that, and I explained what the Unforgiveable Sin is, and also why it is unforgiveable. It is not because God will not forgive it, but rather because the person in question does not want to be forgiven, and God will respect their free will.
Quoting Beebert
Okay, please take the time to quote specific instances. Not just Hebrews 6, I want the verses you're referring to.
I view God's rebukes in the same light - he is rebuking people who think they know what they're talking about instead of being humble and admit to human limitations.
Hebrews 6:4-6
4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,
5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,
6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.
Hebrews 10:26-29:
26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
27 But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.
28 He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses:
29 Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?
Romans 8: 28-30
29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
Matthew 13:42
And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
John 6:44
No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.
Romans 9:
It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. 7 Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”[b] 8 In other words, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring. 9 For this was how the promise was stated: “At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son.”[c]
10 Not only that, but Rebekah’s children were conceived at the same time by our father Isaac. 11 Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: 12 not by works but by him who calls—she was told, “The older will serve the younger.”[d] 13 Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”[e]
14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses,
“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”[f]
16 It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. 17 For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”[g] 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
19 One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” 20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”[h] 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?
22 What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— 24 even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? 25 As he says in Hosea:
“I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people;
and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,”[i]
26 and,
“In the very place where it was said to them,
‘You are not my people,’
there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”[j]
27 Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:
“Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea,
only the remnant will be saved.
28 For the Lord will carry out
his sentence on earth with speed and finality.”[k]
29 It is just as Isaiah said previously:
“Unless the Lord Almighty
had left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom,
we would have been like Gomorrah.”[l]
Israel’s Unbelief
30 What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; 31 but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. 32 Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. 33 As it is written:
“See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall,
and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.”
There are a few passages. Then there are plenty in the book of revelation and also some others in Matthew, John and Luke.
"The event that we cannot know when it will happen, is the Lords terrible Day of wrath, the next prophesied event to happen. Several years later, the Return of Jesus for His Millennium reign, will be known to the day, as it will be exactly 1260 days after the Temple is desecrated.
I have posted the timeline below twice before, no one can refute it.
7000 years from the Creation to the Completion of Mankind:
Genesis 1:27 Adam was created in 3970.5 BCE
Gen 5:3 Seth +130, Gen 5:6 Enoch +105, Gen 5:9 Kenan +90, Gen 5:12 Mahalalel +70, Gen 5:15 Jared +65, Gen 5:18 Enoch +162, Gen 5:21 Methuselah +65, Gen 5:25 Lamech +187, Gen 5:28 Noah+182, Gen 6:7 The Flood came when Noah was +600, Gen 11:10
Our year 2314.5 BCE
Arpachshad +2 - born to Shem after the flood. Gen 11:12 Selah +35, Gen 11:14 Heber +30, Gen 11:16 Peleg +34, Gen 11:18 Reu +30, Gen 11:20 Serug +32, Gen 11:22 Nahor +30 , Gen 11:24 Terah +29, Gen 11:26 Abram +70, Abram was +52 when God called him and they left Ur. Our year 1970.5 BCE He lived in Haran for 23 years, then went to Canaan at age 75. Genesis 12:4
Total years so far = 2000
Gen 17:1, Abraham was 99 when the Covenant was made with God. +47 Genesis 17:1-8
Galatians 3:17 Paul states that the Law was given +430 after the Covenant. Total years elapsed until the Exodus – 2477, in our year 1493.5 BCE. [Many ancient records say Comet Typhon passed close the earth at that time. It was the cause of many of the disasters in Egypt.]
1 Kings 6:1 The Temple construction starts, in the 4th year of King Solomon +480 since the Torah was given at the Exodus.. 1 Kings 11:42 Solomon 40 minus 4 = +36, 1 Kings 14:21 Rehoboam +17, 1 Kings 15:2 Abijah +3, 2 Chron 16:13 Asa +41, 1 Kings 22:42 Jehoshaphat +25, 2 Kings 8:17 Jehoram +8, 2 Kings 8:26 Ahaziah +1, 2 Kings 11:1-3 Athaliah +6, 2 Kings 12:1-3 Joash +40, 2 Kings 14:1-2 Amaziah +29, 2 Kings 15:1-2 Azariah +52, 2 Kings 15:32 Jotham +16, 2 Kings 16:1-2 Ahaz +16, 2 Kings 18:1-2 Hezekiah +29, 2 Kings 21:1 Manasseh +55, 2 Kings 21:19 Amon +2, 2 Kings 22:1-2 Josiah +31, 2 Kings 22:31 Jehoahaz +3mths, 2 Kings 23:31 Jehoiakim +11, 2 Kings 24:8 Jehoichin +3mths, 2 Kings 24:18 Zedekiah +11, who ruled until the Babylonian captivity in our year 586 BCE.
Total elapsed years to the first exile of Judah = 3386.5
586 BCE + 613.5 years + 2 comes to 29.5 CE, the date of Jesus’ baptism. Luke 3:1 Plus 2 to include the total number of elapsed years, as our calendar system counts years from their commencement.
3386.5 + 613.5 = 4000 years.
January 2017 CE - 29.5 CE = 1987.5 years since the commencement of Jesus’ Ministry.
1987.5 + 4000 = 5987.5 years, is where we are now. 5987.5 + 12.5 = 6000 years
2017 CE + 12.5 = 2029.5 CE Exactly 2000 years to the end of the present Church age. 4000 since Abraham, 6000 since Adam, next comes the 1000 year reign of Jesus.
7000 years is God’s decreed time for mankind.
Those who have been found worthy will go into eternity with God. Revelation 22:1-5"
For what reason it is unsubstantial and underwhelming?
No, the moral of the story actually amounts to something different. That Job is puny and insignificant, and while he's yelling at God, he doesn't understand this. He lifts himself above God thinking that he knows enough to pronounce judgement on God and his creation. This awareness of one's finitude, and more importantly that one doesn't deserve anything to begin with (so what right does Job even have to demand something of the Creator?). The right attitude in front of these limitations is faith - because God knows what is best better than you, with your limited faculties and intelligence do.
Job is a fine story up until you realize there's no tangible justification on God's part for condemning Job in the first place.
Quoting Agustino
The God of Job has the sort of personality and communication with its creations that isn't comparable to Jobs like you and me. Again, the circular "logic" here is that one must first have faith in God's existence in order then to have faith in God's will, which really makes no sense at all.
I'm sorry your have been troubled enough to need hospitalization. You are by no means the only person at this forum who have experienced these kinds of problems. Over the years (I'm 70) I haven't been very successful at managing the kind of obsessive thinking that takes on a life of its own. It captures the spotlight of our attention.
I think it might be the case that the way you are approaching your encounter with scripture is being directed less by your cognition and more by mood. This isn't a failing of your ability to think, it's a consequence of your mood disorder, or whatever it is. But it's very tough to think clearly when we do not feel well.
The long passage Agustino quoted is an important one: In it the author makes very clear that we can know nothing about God. God is beyond our entire skill set. God spoke through the prophets, not the other way around. Maybe God became flesh in Bethlehem--"God lies in a manager, in flesh now appearing" as a Moravian hymn puts it--to overcome the problem of his utter otherness.
Have you read anything about Slavoj Zizek? He interprets(quite unorthodox though) the passion of Christ in the sense that God, in the moment he died, himself became an atheist. Christ's death according to Zizek was the end of God's "otherness". The "Big other" died on the cross and man is left to himself along with the holy spirit. Something like that...
I think it is safe to say that quite a few people find it hard to appreciate Paul. Paul was something of a self-powered buzz-saw. Brilliant guy, no doubt. Paul is useful if, for not other reason, that he shows to us that believers were forming up in the Jewish diaspora, either with the help of their own memories of Jesus, with the help of apostles or with other workers.
Paul found formation in progress and helped it move forward. He helped systematize the formation, and thus, stamped later Christianity with P-A-U-L. Either God wished that it would happen that way, or that's just the way things worked out. Take your pick.
How do you know that? No reason is given that we know of. There is a reason, but it will not be revealed to everyone in this life, and to those for whom it is revealed, I doubt it could be put in a syllogism that everyone would find convincing. For everyone else, there is the hope that it will be revealed in the life to come. Secondly, why do you assume God condemns him? In the story, it's Satan who brings about Job's misfortunes, not God.
One of the interpretations of the Death of God is that God becoming incarnate in Jesus--the "God lies in a manger" image. The incarnation was not the death of God, but in becoming flesh, Heaven was emptied of God. God "died" on the cross. What remained was God's spirit in the world, no longer secluded, but here, in this world.
Obviously I have no way of knowing whether that is true or not. I sort of like it, but an empty heaven is somewhat troubling. All that vacant real estate. What are the angels doing in the meantime, unsupervised as they are?
Are all our prayers ending up in an email address from which no responses are ever sent? Or do we receive an automated message? "God is out of the office at this time. His time is not your time, so please do not hold your breath waiting for an answer." Or maybe, "Your call is very important to God. Please stay on the line. All calls will be answered in the order they were received. You are caller # 7,342,965.681. Your wait time is about 1 billion years, give or take 15 minutes. If you don't want to wait, call back at a later time."
Write on the blackboard 100 times (a la Bart Simpson), "Fuck John Calvin, Fuck Martin Luther, Fuck Augustine, and double fuck all fundamentalists."
I pick
Quoting Bitter Crank
I've spent way too much time around Christianity to have no emotional connections with it -- and that has been a long struggle -- but intellectually, i believe that human beings created the gods and religion. We created the gods in our own image and it is a high point of human culture. Some of our gods have represented the most practical needs (like fertility of the soil, that we might eat), and some of them represented our highest aspirations. Some of them have been really awful.
We are members of the primate family. We are very bright, yes, opposable thumbs, sure; big-brained, imaginative, language wielding, fire-using, tool making, primates. We were cast into this world unprepared to deal with all of the screwy contradictions which we have found in the world and especially in ourselves, and it drives us up the wall.
So you follow basically the ideas of Feuerbach then maybe?
So, an unreasoned reason? Surely there's something rather wrong with that.
Quoting Thorongil
Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if someone found a shot in the dark to be unreasonable.
Quoting Thorongil
This life after which also is unreasonable and cannot be reasoned to be true or even potentially more true than any other future after death. As I remember telling Agustino some time ago, you end up with faith upon faith upon faith ad near infinitum.
Quoting Thorongil
If God has the power to remedy, he must also have the power to prohibit, yes? Even a Job who has faith can and will still be brought low and to his knees, whether or not he believes good will come about as a result. Also, I think there's a separation between Job attaining salvation and merely being redeemed on earth. Job is a story of earthly perseverance, not heavenly attainment. Job doubted because he lost his material needs, which still aren't even guaranteed or ensured if the story goes on and on.
I think it's inadvisable to fall into the 'theist vs atheist' dichotomy. Žižek and Feuerbach are both atheists. But the problem with atheism is that it is generally materialist; it leads to the view that you're simply a physical organism and that the Universe is governed by chance. It tends to suck the meaning out of everything.
I think the better approach is to suppose that 'religions', broadly speaking, represent archetypal realities. Such terms as Nirv??a or 'the Kingdom of Heaven' represent states of being which the Buddha and Jesus, respectively, wished to communicate to their audiences. One can accept that in quite a naturalistic way, as being a human potential (indeed, it is one of the convictions behind the 'human potential movement') without thereby 'signing the dotted line' to give away all powers of autonomous thought and freedom of will, that is customarily understood as one of the consequences of 'being religious'.
One of the seminal books I read in my study was 'The Heretical Imperative' by sociologist Peter Berger:
Another more recent meditation on a similar theme, which I would strongly recommend to someone like yourself, is A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World, Thomas Moore.
The questions you're asking, the very title of the thread, shows that this is indeed the kind question you're wrestling with. Keep wrestling, by all means, but I personally hope that the atheist 'solution' is not the one that wins out.
No, an undisclosed reason and one that is undisclosable in the sense of not being easily communicable to other people, I would say.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
I don't see this as a response what I said.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
This isn't true. In the history of philosophy, there have been many arguments given in favor of an afterlife, or put differently, the existence and immortality of the soul. You can disagree with them, but only after you've acknowledged and made a charitable attempt to understand them.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
No, I don't see that that follows. You'd have to be more specific. God cannot violate a being's will, for example.
May I ask, if I haven't already, are you a believer in a certain kind of religion or so? Are you a christian for example? Or a buddhist? And what is your view on the atheism of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche? I believe Nietzsche was profoundly religious behind all his attacks against christianity. I am not saying he believed in the christian God, but he certainly was no materialist or "new atheist".
Not by itself, no, for that would be Pelagianism. God wills that all men are saved, which initiates our salvation. But we are then free to accept or reject this grace. God cannot force us to do one or the other. Moreover, such "acceptance" is not solely intellectual assent to a series of propositions (dogmas) but also a mode of living grounded in the sacraments.
A tip: you need to get over that.
Quoting Beebert
Grew up in a very secular environment, Australia in the 60's, non-religious parents, but went to a Church school. I always felt a basic affinity with the Jesus of the Gospels, but was never particularly drawn to church as such. Because of the times - me being a 'boomer', probably a couple of generations older than yourself - I discovered Eastern thought, which was in the air in those times. I bought many popular Eastern books - Krishnamurti, Paramahansa Yogananda, Swami Vivekananda - all of whom were Eastern spiritual teachers who lived and taught in America. In the end, I decided the Buddhist attitude was the most useful, because of its pragmatism, and because of it's emphasis on meditation practice. (Here's my brief guide to sitting meditation.) But my attitude is syncretist, it draws on various sources, and I still have a strong affinity with Christian Platonism.
Nietszche I think is a vastly over-rated sacred cow. Schopenhauer - I greatly admire his idealism but not his misanthropy. I think he had a kind of partial realisation - in Buddhist terms, he understood the 'first truth', that life is dukkha, but didn't have a real grasp of the 'cessation of suffering and the way to the cessation of suffering'. But you can't blame him considering the times he lived in, and I do regard him as a great philosopher. I frequently cite some of his central arguments.
In terms of the cultural mainstream, I don't think much of modern academic philosophy, or mainstream religion for that matter. My attitude remains counter-cultural i.e. mainstream culture doesn't get it. You have to get off the beaten track to find what I'm interested in.
What do you think of christian dogmas such as original sin, salvation by grace through faith, Christ dying for the sins of the world and the last judgement etc?
Not easily communicable? Who here is failing to make this communication of the truth, God? If communicating the truth is merely hard and not impossible, then that's some piss poor justification for saying nothing.
Quoting Thorongil
Aye, arguments that are put forward in words that are in favor of something which words can't make intelligible. And whether or not one seeks to acknowledge and understand these arguments does not, therefore, ensure the truth of their claims. The best one will get is a faith in a hopefully well reasoned argument that supposes the validity of itself with conviction.
Quoting Thorongil
If I understand how you're using "violate", then I'd say that God does indeed violate a being's will, in that he denies one's will to ever be and never to not be. In a way if God is Being then he cannot fully remove the essence of that which he has willed to be, which really is a violation as I understand the word, as the created is thereby shackled to a will and a being that he, obviously, was not privy to when "he" didn't exist.
~
I might add that it's rather funny how a notion of existence before life is categorically rejected as being logically incoherent by you, but it would seem that a system that suggests the truth about some sort of existence/life/presence/soulparty after life is somehow different. If I'm wrong in this characterization, I'm wrong, but I do think that if you rule out talking about unborn children, you ought to rule out the strangeness of talking about "yourself" after you'd already be dead. But perhaps you actually will after acknowledging and understanding those positions that posit such things..? :P
I think Nietzsche is overrated as a philosopher, but not as a social critic. His immense impact on the thinking man and woman in recent history should never be diminished as being unimportant merely because he wasn't much of a philosopher.
Quoting Beebert
Dude, read this again and please tell me you're not asking a little bit too much from those questions, >:O
The problem with a lot of modern American religiosity is that it is overly literalistic - as I said before, it has no sense of what is metaphorical and what is literal. There is this deep sense of clinging to biblical truth, as if to doubt it is to fall into the clutches of Satan. So I think for that kind of mentality, you have to be able to let it all go, to even become totally agnostic or atheistic about it. Because it's based on a kind of fear and a kind of clinging, the intense desire for certainty, not to be wrong, to be Saved.
A lot of that does come out of Calvinism, in my view. I am deeply distrustful of Calvinism, generally. (Calvin has been called 'The Ayatollah of Geneva'.) It gives rise to this profound anxiety as to whether I'm one of the chosen or the damned. I can perfectly understand, if you grew up surrounded by that kind of attitude, why you're angry with it.
Alan Watts, one of the counter-cultural sources I mentioned, would say that clinging is the opposite of faith; faith is learning to let go, learning to be OK with not knowing. 'If you try and cling to the water', he would say, 'you drown. You have to learn to float'. That is something you find a lot of in Taoist texts, but you also find it in some ancient Christian sources - well before Calvin, mind you.
I think for you to be liberated from that Calvinist mentality, you have to first of all forgive it. If you want to fight it, or prove that those who hold it are wrong, then it still has a hold. My sense is, that is the kind of catharsis you need - to be able to walk away from it. It's not necessarily an easy road to take, but I think by coming here and asking these questions, that's what you're doing.
I came across, stole, or developed some of the ideas I have about religion back in the late 1970s, early 1980s. I can't recover sources, specific influences, yada yada yada at this point. Too late.
You seem very well read, a deep thinker. What's your intellectual background?
Nietzsche was indeed gifted. No perhaps he didn't understand the spiritual, since he didn't believe in it. He did however understood the psychology behind human actions etc. quite well. He had deep psychological insights. Only Dostoevsky and perhaps Kierkegaard has impressed me as much on that area as Nietzsche.
Anyway, you are ABOSLUTELY correct about Calvinism. It is calvinism that has completely destroyed my faith in the goodness of the God of christianity. It is almost, it seems, impossible to not think that IF christianity is true, then the God of christianity is a calvinist. Though I have no respect for any calvinist preacher I have read or heard in terms of spiritual insight. They just repeat the letters of a text. So that should give me a clue. And they all say "Truth is external to you. Not internal. It is in a book, not in your heart", basically. Calvinism is a poison. One of the worst ideas ever invented. Yet, It is hard to not believe it if you take christian doctrines such as election and predestination in combination with the idea that God is all-powerful and all-knowing seriously. And many passages in the bible seem to be in favour for calvinism. But yes. I know that in relation to calvinism AND fundamentalism, I must be an agnostic/atheist. Actually, if calvinism is true, then I would prefer to go to hell than heaven. Calvinism is for heavenly utilitarians. Thank you for your tips on how I should move on. I hope I will get there eventually, to the place where I can forgive and forget.
Grace and mercy are not offered once. They are continually offered, since God's nature doesn't change. God's nature is goodness itself, so God can only will the good, which is to say, he can only love. Salvation then consists of accepting his love. All of this is to say that, no, the person in your example is not damned. But there are two points I think need making in relation to this answer. First, we don't ultimately know who or whether anyone will be damned. That's up to God. Second, one isn't damned by rejecting God's grace after realizing it. Indeed, that is self-contradictory, for if you've realized God's grace, then you haven't rejected it. Rather, the only way to reject God is to commit mortal sin. The three criteria for what constitute a mortal sin are that the act is intrinsically evil, that it was done with full knowledge, and that it was done with deliberate consent. So it's actually rather difficult to be damned.
And perhaps not at all.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Let me ask you a question: do you think the truth is capable of being exhaustively expressed in language? If you answer in the affirmative, then, if I asked you to express it and you declined, you would either know the truth and are merely withholding it from us for some reason or you would be obliged to say that we haven't yet discovered it all. But then notice in the case of the latter that it takes a leap of faith to believe that the truth can be exhaustively communicated through language in the future, since it hasn't happened yet. If you answer in the negative, then you already admit the existence of mystery and of the possibility of God, if he exists, to disclose certain truths, such as those about suffering, by means that are not easily or not at all capable of being communicated.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
An odd complaint. Can words ever make anything fully intelligible? All words are generalized, mediated abstractions from perception, not to mention wherever else they may derive.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
But this is incoherent. There couldn't be a will to be or not to be, for that entails that an agent exist before he can decide to exist, which is impossible.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
"Unborn child" is a category that exists, provided we're talking about fetuses and embryos. But yes, I do deny that there exists anyone to consent or not consent to being born, for the same reason given above. That being said, I don't why you think this then entails my ruling out one's existence after death, unless you assume that death results in non-existence. In other words, if death results in non-existence, then positing an afterlife would amount to saying that it is possible to exist after you exist, which is just as impossible as existing before you exist. But I don't say that death necessarily results in non-existence. I haven't made up my mind, and whatever conclusion I reach, I couldn't ever know for sure until I died.
Then you should repent, otherwise you're damned. Or at least, for all we know you will be. It's still ultimately up to God.
Quoting Beebert
Dubitable. He would have to meet all three criteria, remember, which is rather difficult to do. You mentioned things like fornication and gambling. These types of sins are nigh impossible to commit with deliberate consent, given the reasons and circumstances usually involved in committing them.
Quoting Beebert
If he repents, no. But he may need to spend a long time in purgatory to amend his life of debauchery. Thus, he can't escape being judged for his actions.
What Beebert is referring to is the Calvinist doctrine of pre-destination: that, aside from the Elect, the vast majority of mankind is destined for hell. Wikipedia article here.
You can not tempt God into punishing you. You (we) are way too little, God is way too much.
....
There's a deep historical back-story to how it got this way. That is explained in Michael Allen Gillespie's The Theological Origins of Modernity:
Another important text in this story is Max Weber's The Protestant Work Ethic, to which Calvinism is central. That too is writ large in conservative American politics and religion.
This is what Calvinism stands for in 5 nutshells
Total depravity: We cannot respond to God's offer of salvation, since our will—indeed, our whole being—has been rendered incapable by sin. This contrasts with Christian traditions that say we have sufficient free will to respond to God's offer of salvation or that we can "cooperate" with grace.
Unconditional election: God chooses to save some people, not because of anything they have done, but according to his sovereign will. This contrasts with other Christian traditions that teach that God desires to save everyone, but only elects those whom he foreknows will respond to his grace.
Limited atonement: Christ died for the sins of the church, not for the whole world. This contrasts with traditions that teach that Christ died for all, even though all may not appropriate the benefits of his sacrifice.
Irresistible grace: Those God elects cannot resist the Holy Spirit's draw to salvation. This contrasts with Christian traditions that teach that we are able to reject God's forgiveness—thus, while God may choose to save everyone, not everyone chooses to believe.
Perseverance of the saints: By God's power, believers will endure in faith to the end. Other Christian traditions teach that people can forsake faith and lose salvation.
Christianity: Believe in the God of Christianity and that Jesus is the savior OR be damned for eternity
Buddhism: The four noble truths OR suffer endlessly in Samsara
Notice the commonality, which can be loosely translated as eternal suffering if you fail to believe in either of them.
So, if you believe in Jesus, you go to Buddhist hell and if you believe in Buddha you go to Christian hell.
On the other hand, if you believe in Jesus, you go to Christian heaven and if you believe in Buddha, you gain enlightenment.
Sure, I perfectly agree with this. This is referencing people who are fully aware of God's Love, but who nevertheless reject it and turn away from it. How would it be possible for them to turn back (repent) when their own wills refuse to do it?
Quoting Beebert
This means there is no salvation for those who - not only with their minds - but with their hearts deny God - for sin always is a matter of the heart and not of the intellect. All this is saying is that even the death and Resurrection of Jesus cannot help such people, for it is their own will which stops them from accepting the free gift of salvation. They know the truth - so they fully know about the gift of salvation - and yet they refuse it. What can be done? Nothing.
Whom he did foreknow - God foreknew everyone.
Quoting Beebert
This refers metaphorically to the kingdom of heaven. Yes, those who hate God will find God's love as a furnace of fire, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth - it is a metaphorical description for the afterlife - a parable.
This is true. It means that without God's revelation, one could not come to God. This is absolutely true. However, note that it also says that ALL shall be taught of God - so all are drawn to the Father. God pursues all men.
What St. Paul is talking about here is the reason why the Jewish people rejected Christ. He was providing an explanation of it, that despite them being Elect - because Israel are the Chosen People - that doesn't mean they will be saved if they refuse the Messiah. The reason for their refusal is their lack of faith, it's not their lack of knowledge of God's Word, as clarified at the end.
Calvin was most likely a heretic with a profound misunderstanding of the Bible, who rejected the authority of the Apostolic tradition.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
:s you asked about the meaning of the story, and I told you the meaning. This isn't a rebuttal of that meaning. How do you know God doesn't have a personal communication to you? Maybe He does.
How do you know there isn't a reason? Just because God hasn't told it to you doesn't mean you can just infer its absence :s
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Theoretically, but practically God will not infringe the free will of His creatures.
Quoting Wayfarer
>:O >:O >:O >:O Do you have your pink flying pony with you Wayfarer? :D A religion of one's own is precisely what a religion is not - a religion involves a community not a random fella who thinks he's spiritual, holds to liberal and progressive politics, reads Eastern books, does drugs, stares at a wall and then goes back to his day to day work :s
Edit: Wow how unexpected, I wrote the above before reading this:
Quoting Wayfarer
They cannot repent because what could cause them to repent? If in full knowledge of God they turn against Him, then what can cause them to repent? They already know all the facts, they've tasted of the fruits of heaven, and they still turned against God. What can possibly cause them to repent now? :s
What would cause them to regret their actions? They already know everything there is to know. So there isn't anymore knowledge that they can have - so in the absence of additional knowledge, what can cause them to regret their actions?
Speaking of that, here is another passage in the bible that I have a hard time with, and which seems to suggest just that God refuses to forgive or heal some people: "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turn--and I would heal them."
John 12:40
What does God's grace have to do with their will? God has already fully revealed Himself to them, and they have rejected Him.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, they could realise that perhaps it was wrong if there was any new & relevant knowledge that they could gain access to. But there isn't.
Quoting Beebert
That's false. Many people would like to end up there.
Quoting Beebert
No.
Speaking of that, here is another passage in the bible that I have a hard time with, and which seems to suggest just that God refuses to forgive or heal some people: "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turn--and I would heal them."
John 12:40
What about that passage? And there are many similar to it in scripture.
God "hardens their hearts" by not breaking their free will. God could force them to believe in Him and thus be saved, but then He would break their freedom of will, and that's not what God is going to do. Thus he "hardens the hearts and blinds the eyes" of unbelievers by allowing them to persist in their sin.
An oxymoron. Calvinism is in fact a quite radical form of Christianity, for it breaks, and conserves little, from Christianity as it existed for 1500 years. It came as a form of protest, like all forms of Protestantism, of what Christianity hitherto was and meant.
Quoting Wayfarer
Does he argue that Calvinism accepts nominalism?
I think that would violate his nature, so I don't think he could do this.
'radical' means 'of the root'. So, yes, I suppose from the perspective of Catholicism, Calvin was radical, but in the context of US culture, Reformed Theology is most often associated with political conservatism.
That 'TULIP' acronym is not BC's invention, it is part of Reformed apologetics.
The reason I referred to the Gillespie book, is that it analyses the significance of nominalism in the overthrow of scholastic metaphysics, and the many implications of that. The crucial point was that the nominalist vision of God was such that God was not even constrained by logic - He could completely subvert logic if he so choose. God is utterly omnipotent, omniscient, and completely unknowable.
Whereas, in the Scholastic philosophy, God was in some sense rational, even if also beyond rationality. (I might not be putting that well, but it's an argument that Gillespie takes an entire book to develop and it is a very complex issue.)
Another book I have partially completed about a similar topic is Brad S Gregory's 'The Unintended Reformation' http://a.co/i2t4t3d . Gregory points out that one profound consequence of Luther's 'strict adherence to the Bible' was a massive splintering of sects and sub-sects, based on exactly that 'strict adherence' - because different people interpreted the 'strict meaning' in such a diversity of ways.
Why? Nothing is impossible for God - theoretically. Practically God would not break his creature's free will - but He could do it theoretically.
Quite the voluntarist conception of God you have there. Aquinas would not approve.
I don't think God can create a square circles, perform evil, or make 2+2=5, among other impossible things. Perhaps you should tell me what work the word "theoretically" is supposed to be doing, though.
Breaking the free will of his creatures is not logically impossible (like making 2+2=5 is, or creating a stone so heavy that he cannot lift, etc.). And I know Aquinas would not approve, but I hold he's wrong on that ;) :P
Why not?
Why would it be? :s I see no necessary contradiction in God breaking the will of human beings. The only reason He does not break it, is because He doesn't want to.
Why is it wrong when God has created them from nothing and wields complete power over them, not having had to create them in the first place? Does God owe something to His creatures or what? :s
That's the Orthodox distinction for example between created and Uncreated. You cannot judge the Uncreated by the same standard you judge the Created. Aquinas doesn't see this very well because his distinction is between natural and super-natural - which doesn't go deep enough.
Quoting Agustino
No it doesn't sound like Descartes evil demon. But the standard of what's right and wrong changes. You keep talking about God committing wrong - that would not be wrong.
In order for you to maintain your position, you would have to deny that God is immutable or that God is goodness itself, either of which would be to reject classical theism, which obviously includes Aquinas. It seems to me, if you do so, that Scotus of Ockham ought to be your favorite philosopher.
Nope. Creator has different rights than creatures. It would be wrong for a creature to deprive you of your free will, not for God. If it wasn't for God, you wouldn't have had free will to begin with, so what harm is being done if He takes what He gave you in the first place?
Quoting Thorongil
Nope.
Quoting Thorongil
I believe this.
Quoting Thorongil
Same.
Quoting Thorongil
Sure.
Quoting Thorongil
Nope.
Sure, but they wouldn't include doing that which is wrong among creatures, for then you're faced with a contradiction: God can do right by himself by doing wrong to us, so he can do both right and wrong simultaneously, which is impossible.
Nope.
Quoting Agustino
I haven't said God could beat you and torture you and that would be right.
Clarify this negative. Nope as in, "no, God wouldn't do what we deem wrong," or nope as in, "you're wrong, Thorongil."
Those traditions are wrong.
Quoting Thorongil
No as in God wouldn't do wrong. What is wrong for you to do isn't necessarily wrong for God to do - that's the difference between created creature and uncreated Creator.
That doesn't get out of the contradiction! If God can do right by doing wrong from our perspective, then he's still doing wrong. But God can't do wrong. What is wrong for us must, at minimum, be wrong for God, in addition to whatever else may be wrong from God's perspective that we don't know about. This is once again because God, if he exists and is goodness itself, is the author of our notions of right and wrong. So he can't violate them without violating his own nature.
What I find to be a helpful approach (and maybe you would possibly), is a small dose of ignosticism, in a Theistic way. Meaning that any knowledge of the Creator filtered through our perceptions is bound to be relative. Even if one defines the Creator as absolute, we as humans are planted in the relative world. Even if one were given a glimpse of the Absolute, the finite brain, as wonderful and powerful as it is, immediately turns the experience into something of a lower-resolution copy, like a low bitrate audio file of a Beatles song. Is it still useful and real and special? Yes, for certain. But if there is degradation in message quality even within one's own mind, how much more so when attempting to communicate it to others? Which again is all well and good. Sharing our beliefs, experiences, speculations, and opinions, etc. can possibly be true, beautiful, and good. Keeping in mind the nature of our minds, the limits of the entire affair, the "rules of the game" if you will, might make things a bit clearer. This might be obvious, but it bears mentioning. FWIW.
You mean there are places in the Old Testament where sinners are punished and killed? Of course.
:) (Y)
No, your perspective is wrong. There is only one true perspective, and that is God's.
Quoting Thorongil
Your notions of right and wrong are first of all corrupted by original sin, so you do not see very clearly. Second of all, your notions of right and wrong are self-centered - or better said creature-centered - which means that they are myopic since they do not take into account your creaturely nature, and the difference between the Uncreated and the created. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away - FREELY! And it's His right to.
I direct you towards this book.
And by the way Thorongil, you still haven't answered my question here.
But did you understand it? Do you understand why Alyosha never gave Ivan a reply? Do you understand the West-East conflict that is playing out there? Because lots of people who read Dostoyevsky from the West misinterpret that book completely because they don't understand Christian Orthodoxism.
I see clearly enough to know that God cannot commit evil. Period. And I've given an argument as to why.
Quoting Agustino
Not absolutely. He's not free to commit evil, make square circles, cause himself to not exist, etc. His freedom is limited by his nature.
Sure but that's because God is the standard of good itself.
Quoting Thorongil
The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, entirely out of His own accord. Why is it bad if He takes away what He has given? :s How can that be bad?! It would only be bad if we assumed that He owed you something - and that's stupid. He owes you nothing. He will not take it away because He intended you to have free will in the first place - but this is not to say that it would be evil for Him to take it back. It wouldn't.
But he can't change his nature, which is goodness itself, which means neither that which is right nor that which is wrong can change their status. If it is wrong to violate someone's will, then, because that which is wrong cannot cease being wrong, it cannot be the case that God "could have" violated someone's will without having done wrong.
Well one aspect of the conflict for example is displayed by the fact that Ivan uses arguments. This surprises Alyosha, because arguments for/against God are quite foreign in Orthodoxy. God is supposed to be a primal reality here, that people just have to recognise by looking within. So that's one reason why Alyosha doesn't respond - he doesn't understand where Ivan (the West) is coming from, for we do not reason to God, but God is rather a noetic & intuitive first principle. People have to be open to encounter God, practice his Commandments, have Faith in him and pray.
Indeed some of the West's current troubles with scientism & atheism are born out of their love with Scholasticism - I know @Thorongil will hate me now :P
I'm not sure I would affirm such a cataphatic statement about God :P - that presupposes for example that God has a nature, just like created things do :s based on what are you saying that?!
Quoting Thorongil
No it's not wrong in all contexts to violate someone's will. If you want me to shoot you, and I refuse, thereby violating your will, I'm committing no wrong, but a good thing. You have to show and prove to me how violating a created being's will is wrong when the Uncreated God does it.
Quoting Thorongil
If your will comes from God, how is God violating it when He takes it away? :s
I really thought you understood this from Schopenhauer. The categories of thought that apply to the phenomenon don't apply to the noumenon...
If poor Schopenhauer knew about Orthodoxy well enough, I think he would have converted :P
A complete apophaticism would be indistinguishable from atheism. There must be some positive statements one can make about God or else you're just engaged in farce. I agree that we are incapable of comprehending God fully, but we must have some small degree of knowledge about God or else we speak of him in vain.
Quoting Agustino
No, it implies that God has a nature different from created things, analogous but not identical to created natures. We are said to be made in God's image, after all. Moreover, there is a difference between an "atheistic non-existence of God" and a "hyper-thingness of God," (a point made here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0025.2005.00285.x/abstract). God is not absolutely nothing but not a thing either. To assert the former is to assert atheism and to assert the latter is to assert theistic personalism over and against classical theism, which directly leads to atheism, given the paucity of empirical evidence for such an entity that such a view demands.
Quoting Agustino
They don't apply univocally, but analogically. If you reject both univocity and analogy but still want to engage in God-talk, then you're really just an atheist or someone engaged in equivocal gibberish. The alternative, of course, is Wittgenstein's approach: cease talking about God altogether.
No, since atheism has no desire to experience God. A complete apophaticism represents a desire for God, but it doesn't work alone, it requires dogma. And please not that while dogma does include cataphatic statements about God, the vast majority of it is neither cataphatic nor apophatic, as I've illustrated in Shoutbox.
Quoting Thorongil
Sure, but they're lamp posts - guides towards an actual encounter with the incomprehensible trans-rational God.
Quoting Thorongil
And how did you come to this conclusion?
Quoting Thorongil
Sure, but it doesn't necessarily follow from this that God has a fixed nature :s
Quoting Thorongil
I can't read that article for free - but it does appear quite interesting based on the abstract.
Quoting Thorongil
Yes. That's apophaticism, denying both that God is no-thing and that He is a thing.
Quoting Thorongil
Why? I don't buy this. Even the analogical application is wrong in the final analysis, and merely useful, but not true.
Quoting Thorongil
That's false. I'm inviting you to know God personally by following the dogmas, believing in the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, prayer & devotion.
Please qualify what you mean by "fideist" because it can mean a variety of things from believing that knowledge of God depends on revelation & faith; to believing that faith is contrary to reason; to believing that faith is independent of reason, etc. So what exactly do you mean?
I do believe this.
Quoting Agustino
I don't believe this.
Quoting Agustino
Faith is dependent on will & personal experience & revelation
If the truth isn't communicable, then what is Christ's message? If the truth can't be communicated, even by God, then...?
Quoting Thorongil
I don't think capital T Truth is capable of being exhaustively expressed as a certainty through the use of language. I also don't think it can be expressed in any other way, either.
Quoting Thorongil
If you take away verbal communication, do you really think that the complexities of, let's say in this case Christian theology, could be expressed in an accessible, understandable, and intelligible way? I don't think so. I don't think God would even think so, seeing as he sent a man in Jesus to the world in order to speak the good news, with every Christian afterward also speaking that very same good news.
If words are required in order to even get across ordinary, lowercase t truths to us mortals, then for God to withhold the reason(s) for his actions without, through words, communicating it, God wouldn't, then, be communicating anything at all.
Quoting Thorongil
My point is that if it's logically impossible for there to exist some agent before that agent's existence, then it is equally illogical to suggest that some agent exists after said agent's existence already ceases to be. If you retort with, "one has no knowledge of whether or not one's agent ceases to exist after death!" Well, neither do you have knowledge of whether "you" had agency, or being, before you existed, either, as such can't be verified either. Yet, it would seem that agency after, but not before, is somehow more plausible, why?
>:O
Yeah, the one true perspective of God...which is only understood through an untrue perspective...
So, it is independent of reason, thus making you a fideist in this sense.
If so, then I'm baffled as to how you think you can "invite" people to become Christians if their becoming so doesn't depend on rational argument, but rather on will, personal experience, and revelation. What have we been doing this whole time? Why are you talking to @Beebert as well, in that case?
If you invite people without argument, then you're on equal footing with the Buddhist apologist, who, much like your metaphor of the lamp posts, has his own simile of the raft to describe the goal of Buddhism. You've given the prospective believer no means to determine why one path is any better than another.
In the case of the truth about why God allows suffering, I'm saying that that might not be communicable, not that all truths about God are incommunicable.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
A strange position to hold. Why can't the truth be expressed in any way? Remember, my position is that, if God exists, then the truth can be expressed in a way known only to God and only after we die (for most of us).
Quoting Heister Eggcart
I do, if it's God who's expressing them to the individual, rather than other humans. That's the context of our conversation: God may reveal certain things to certain people in certain ways not amenable to communication with other humans.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Jesus came to bring salvation, but how salvation works and in what it consists is ultimately a mystery this side of the grave.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
I would make the argument that I did not exist prior to conception but that I might continue to exist after death, and there would be nothing contradictory in that.
For a balanced, highly nuanced and profoundly philosophical view of Christianity in relation to Buddhism and Advaitism I would highly recommend The Rhythm of Being The Unbroken Trinity by Raimon Pannikar.
https://www.amazon.com/Rhythm-Being-Gifford-Lectures/dp/1626980152/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499729070&sr=8-1&keywords=the+rhythm+of+being
Have you considered the possibility that once there is genuine repentance retrogression is no longer an option?
Yes I have, why? Have I said any thing that made you think I hadn't thought about that? Or was it an answer to any of my questions?
So, you didn't mean to suggest that the "20 year old" you spoke of had experienced genuine repentance?
You are thinking of this in unhelpful 'black and white' terms; it's either "universalism" or "mutually exclusive truth claims". This kind of 'propositional' approach to religions will never open them up for you, and nor will it open you up for them.
Also, what makes you think Beebert needs your advice about whether he or she should read the book?
Yeah, but does he actually present arguments against voluntarism and nominalism or does he just bemoan their purported societal effects? It could be that they have produced a lot of bad effects, but that doesn't mean they're false. Scotus and Ockham are philosophers. Good philosophers. They present extremely sophisticated arguments for the positions they hold. It's intellectually dishonest to ignore them but still dismiss these thinkers on the grounds that some bad things seemingly happened as a result of their ideas.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm still on the fence about whether I should add it to my list. Consider this book:
http://www.fortresspress.com/product/postmodernity-and-univocity-critical-account-radical-orthodoxy-and-john-duns-scotus
The author mentions Gregory as someone who buys into the "Scotus story," which tries to pin on Scotus's shoulders all the bad stuff of modernity. There's also the posts about Gregory on the following blog that are pretty damning, to me: http://lyfaber.blogspot.com/search/label/Brad%20Gregory
I'm no fan of Protestantism or its results, but I also don't like lazy scholarship of the kind Gregory seems to have engaged in. If he gets Scotus so wrong, who's to say the rest of the book is not riddled with misrepresentations? Gregory and Gillespie blame voluntarism and nominalism but then guys like Jonathan Israel have their own just-so story about modernity, in which he doesn't identify an -ism so as to condemn modernity but to praise it, that -ism being Spinozism. These accounts seem to be rather easy to compose. Find a vague idea, use it to explain modernity in a celebratory or condemnatory way, and surround it with a deluge of names, dates, etc.
Quoting Thorongil
You say, without having read it. I can assure you, his book is by no means the output of a lazy person. I didn't finish it, but only because I don't have that much interest in the subject, really. I only have so much to unscramble why Western thinking has culminated in nihilism. As for you, every single source I recommend on this forum, you seem to take pleasure in scorning. Beats me why.
//ps// interesting, that blog post. I suspect I am very interested in the Scotus issue, and I have been recommended that book on another forum.//
Okay, so give me the "shade of grey" position. Regardless of its existence, religions still either make mutually exclusive truth claims or they do not.
Quoting John
Because I value my own advice, just as you do yours, or else you wouldn't have advised that he read the book. :-}
You're right. I haven't read it. But you haven't read the Scotus book or the reviews on The Smithy, have you? Will you? If you promise me you will, then I'll add Gregory/Gillespie to my list.
Beebert started this thread called "Jesus or Buddha"; since the interest in comparative religion is obvious why would s/he not want to read one of the most profound thinkers on the subject? Why would s/he be interested in a prejudiced opinion as to whether s/he should read the book, coming from one who has not even read the book?
I would say that outside the ambit of fundamentalism, they do not; but that fact does not entail the kind of universalism that is a polemic to exclusivity, which you seem to have in mind. This very polemic is itself exclusive to fundamentalist thinking, as broadly conceived.
A bold claim and one that is surely false. Let's test it, shall we? The doctrine of anatman, or not-self. Is this claim exclusive to Buddhism or is it accepted by all the other world religions?
I don't understand why you say this. We have had many conversations where I have avowed my long-term interest in Buddhism and Advaita, and the phenomenology of the religious impulse in general. I do think Christianity is the highest, most realized, religious expression,and I believe that Pannikar does also, since he is an ordained Catholic priest. Thinking that is not at all to discount the value of other traditions, though.
The problem is that you are thinking of 'anatman' as a propositional claim. Actually the value of the realization of 'no-self' is present in many traditions including Sufism and Christian Mysticism. It is a matter of interpretation, though.
Also I note that you, somewhat tendentiously, omitted the "outside the ambit of fundamentalism"; I am not suggesting that fundamentalism does not exist in all religions and traditions.
Yes, because, at minimum, it is exactly that. That's not all it is, though, clearly.
Quoting John
Mhmm, but one interpretation must be right and the others wrong, unless I'm talking to an epistemic relativist, which I don't think I am.
So, how would you describe Pannikar's book? Is he more of a universalist or does he acknowledge that religions have mutually exclusive truth claims? He would make for a very odd Catholic priest if he suggested that it didn't much matter whether one was Catholic, Buddhist, or Hindu. Maybe he's a Jesuit, though.
It was because of remarks like this:
Quoting John
I took that is pretty condemnatory of my entire approach to the Forum, but please feel free to set me straight.
John said this? Then why the hell is he disagreeing with me?! Lol.
Btw, it looks like Pannikar was educated at a Jesuit college, so things are not looking well for him. I had a hunch!
I would say it is not a propositional claim at all, because such claims are proper only in the empirical sphere. Reading it propositionally; what would you say that it is actually claiming?
Quoting Thorongil
I don't believe it is an "epistemic" matter at all.
I would say that Pannikar examines every way that he can think of of thinking about the divine, and that he avows that ultimately, none of them can possibly be adequate.This is speaking from the point of view of pure rationality, though. If the ways of thinking about the divine are understood as being metaphorical, or even more profoundly as examples of mythoi, moments or movements that shape the spirituality of entire cultures; then there can be no question of comparing them in terms of right and wrong; of 'either/or".
That there is no permanent, unchanging self.
Quoting John
We're speaking of the truth of one interpretation over and against others, are we not? How is it not epistemic?
Quoting John
And yet he's a Catholic priest. Does he explain why he chose and continued to be one?
Are you confident that you have understood what I meant to say there? What exactly do you think I am saying there that leads to your conclusion? If you can pinpoint that, then we might be able to discover where you have misinterpreted what I said according, perhaps, to your own preconceptions. I can assure you that I see no contradiction or inconsistency in what I was thinking when I wrote that, and when I recommended Pannikar.
What is "an unchanging permanent self"? Surely you need to know what something is, before you can deny it?
Quoting Thorongil
Matters of interpretation are properly hermeneutic, not epistemic.
Quoting Thorongil
Not that I remember. He doesn't seem keen to get into making comparative value judgements concerning the different traditions. But I speculate that he would have chosen Christianity because it was his 'native' tradition; the one within which he experienced his spiritual epiphany and was converted. Then he went back to study Buddhism and Advaitism because he is half-Indian, and he saw those as part of his cultural 'roots'. I speculate that he remained a Christian because he did see it as the highest, and philosophically richest, expression of the truth. I say this because Christianity includes notions of radical freedom, personality and a personal relationship with the Divine, that the other traditions (at least the non-Abrahamic) do not.
Seemed unequivocal at the time - that my 'style of popular perennialism' has a 'fatal shortcoming'. Didn't seem a lot of room for interpretation.
The reason I used the term 'popular perennialism' was to indicate that I wasn't taking my approach overly seriously - it is similar to the kind of approach found in writers like Huston Smith, Ninian Smart, Alan Watts, and so on (I would hope, anyway). But I think it's an important approach in our cultural context which is by nature pluralistic in that it has to draw on a number of perspectives. So what I am trying to do, is to indeed discern if there are the outlines of a truly perennial philosophy in such materials - rather than getting into sectarian apologetics.
@Thorongil - Pannikar was a Jesuit. They are in a class of their own.
Now you're critiquing the concept, but I'm not a Buddhist, so you'd have to ask them. But speaking on behalf of them, I would say that a permanent, unchanging self is a concept that has no referent in reality. It would likely fall under the category of "wrong views." All that exists is an impermanent, changing self.
Quoting John
Any attempt to distinguish the true from the false is an epistemic endeavor.
Quoting John
Your first speculation was an original concern. I can only hope your second one is more accurate.
Quoting Wayfarer
Which may also be the Devil's. ;)
Yes, well I do think the problem with "popular perennialism" is its attempt to synthesize "the outlines of a truly perennial philosophy" because I don't believe there can be any such thing. There is certainly a perennial religious or spiritual impulse, but all the different traditions represent their own unique expressions of that. It is in the cultural uniqueness of traditions that their spiritual richness lies. As Pannikar himself says in the book I recommended:
"There is no single ultimate answer, because there is no single ultimate question". My earlier comment was based on the belief that you recommend that there is a "one true authority", a "genuine higher truth", and idea which, as I said, I think popular perennialism although itself valorizing (ironically) undermines. My argument with popular perennialism is over its superficiality not over its (unintended) undermining of the notion of any spiritual authority.
I think what you're reacting against in all of what is said, is simply the word 'higher'. And why? Because
it connotes religious authority, so it hits a button. I never claimed any authority, but I will observe that the ethical and philosophical principles of the spiritual traditions have much in common, as Pannikar and others observe. And so, yes, I do think there is 'higher truth', and so there is a vertical dimension, which has to all intents vanished from Western culture (hence, books like Flatland, and One Dimensional Man, and several others.) Science doesn't comprehend that 'vertical dimension' at all, it can only be plumbed in the first person, so to speak.
I don't so much "react against" the idea of "higher authority" as just plain disagree with it. I think you are inappropriately imputing an unjustified psychologistic explanation for my views here.
The notion of "higher authority" comes exclusively from human institutions in my view; hence all the strife over it. As to "higher truth", I genuinely believe the same applies; there is no single "higher truth". There are certain spiritual human truths I believe, but none of them are absolute (although some are universal); they are discovered by a phenomenology of human spirituality, which should take note of the differences as well as the commonalities. So, I don't believe we are exhaustively socially, culturally, historically determined; but I do believe that the social, cultural and historical differences are both important and profoundly spiritual.
To be honest I have been puzzled before by your reactions to my disagreeing with you, with you even suggesting that we could not be friends on account of it. To me, it seems more the case that if anyone's "buttons" are being pushed, they are yours rather than mine. Perhaps some of my responses to you have been a bit strident, and seemed to be personal, but I have never meant it that way. Remember it was you that first suggested I was "missing something" without explaining what that "something" is. That does seem personal, and to be honest, somewhat patronizing. Perhaps I did come back a little strong on account of that, but any anger or sense of injustice I might have felt at the time is long forgotten now. :)
I never said there was a single absolute - which is why I take a pluralistic approach. But I believe there must be a genuine vertical dimension, something which is qualitatively superior. Sure, the inability to agree on what that might be is a cause of strife, but that doesn't mean it isn't real. But, with Huston Smith, I believe there are "levels of being", and that the higher level is both more real is also the more valuable; these levels appear in both the "external" and the "internal" worlds, "higher" levels of reality without corresponding to "deeper" levels of reality within. On the lowest level is the material~physical world, which depends for its existence on the higher levels. On the very highest/deepest level is the Infinite or Absolute, whether that be understood as the God of the Christian bible, or the dharmakaya of the Buddhists. And the reality of that is no more a matter of human opinion than gravity or thermodynamics; but it is precisely the reality which modern materialist culture has now forgotten (as outlined in the book from which the above snippet is taken, Huston Smith's 'Forgotten Truth'.)
Quoting John
Apologies for that.
Quoting John
Apologies accepted. ;-)
Likewise :) Quoting Wayfarer
I agree with what you say here; but I would add that the "higher level" is not something which can be determinately formulated. Wherever this is attempted fundamentalism begins. So, I think care must be taken not to reify "levels of being" into social and political hierarchies of any kind. It is in that regard that I have no respect for authority. On the other hand I can see the need for authorities of various kinds to keep the moronic hordes in check. On a different tack, I am put off by the master/disciple hierarchy that seems to be so fundamental in Eastern spirituality. I have a few friends and I have had many other acquaintances, who were disciples of Osho; and they all swear he was a genuine master. The problem with that kind of relationship is; how do you tell?
The thing I like about Panikkar's emphasis on a trinitarian approach is that it allows for the most inclusive pluralism, without dissolving the important differences. That is the beauty of the Christian Trinity, and I'm not convinced that other traditions allow for that, or for the very important personal relationship with God; at least not to the same degree. Although I'm not necessarily saying the personal relationship is important for everyone; I'm undecided about that.
Of course - Dostoevsky was an intellectual and as is usual for the East, there is a very strong tendency to "Westernise" and "Americanise" which usually means taking what is worse from the West rather than what is better (no wonder Communism came to the East - from the West!). The great pity has been the Eastern leaders have really been Western to the core - Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev -
really Western intellectuals, who had lived in the West and had absorbed the Marxist communism propagated there. It's kind of stupid for the West today to claim they opposed communism, when in truth they created it and unleashed it on the Eastern world many times via financial backing and sponsoring with arms of revolutionary movements in the East. That's like throwing stones and breaking someone's windows at night and coming in the morning to offer your services to repair them in exchange for money :s
That is true back then as it is true today. That's why for example both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky struggle with atheism - an atheism which is fundamentally foreign to their motherland (now watch Wayfarer be annoyed :P ). It's an intellectual movement that is coming from the West. So someone like Dostoevsky struggles to resolve the contradiction between Ivan and Alyosha as they appear in his own soul.
Quoting Beebert
Aquinas is one of the best as far as philosophy goes, but as I've stated many times, I actually don't think philosophy has that much to help us. Philosophy doesn't go far enough, and is ultimately a dead end - and it's philosophical to recognise it as such. So my endorsement of Aquinas is a bit ironic - I don't have anyone else to endorse, but even he isn't good enough.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Yes, and it usually has to do with the West who keeps wanting to interfere with the affairs of the East. And this has a long history for many Eastern countries - Russia is actually one of the least affected. Some other countries like say Lithuania or Ukraine have been a ping pong ball between Russia and the West for all their history.
But religion is also an important consideration. Don't forget that the East has for a long time accused the West of being atheistic, and there have been many authors here who keep on predicting the collapse of the West precisely for those reasons. Among the most recent, this one. (not that I agree with him, but it's an interesting read - definitely different than what you find on the Western market).
Quoting Thorongil
Yes sir, I plead guilty to that.
Quoting Thorongil
Ah, well Beebert has some misunderstandings with regards to Scripture, and how Scripture is to be understood (for example the role Apostolic Tradition plays in understanding Scripture). I explained to him passages he found problematic, and directed him to research with regards to the passages from the Old Testament (for it would be silly for me to go over matters that have already been discussed, especially since there's a lot of things he can bring up - I've just shown him that it's possible to account for all those). I think that's very productive.
Quoting Thorongil
Of course! Reason is quite impotent, it's only usefulness really is in inducing a profound skepticism of its own powers, a skepticism which shows the soul its need for God.
Someone will not believe unless they love God and want God - so that's the role of the will. Someone will also not believe unless they have access to revelation. God is hidden, so He must reveal Himself. That's Scripture and Apostolic Tradition. And finally, one will not believe unless they experience God - that's why it says "Taste and see that the LORD is good" - it doesn't say reason and see that the LORD is good.
So it's quite simple. Reason is used as a weapon to prepare one for faith, but it doesn't generate faith at all. All it generates is skepticism (more precisely skepticism of atheism, scientism, etc.). Perhaps my favorite philosopher should be Sextus Empiricus :P
Quoting Thorongil
So does he want to determine if a path is better than another without walking it? What did Jesus do, did He say "Let me convince you that I am the Truth and the Way and the Life"? Or did He invite people to see for themselves that He is the Way?
Your foundational assumptions are problematic. You presuppose that it is a priori possible to determine which is the best path without taking it, and that's false - it's also something that can be borne out of a fear of taking the wrong path (although you have to balance that with the fear of not taking any path, which is definitely the wrong path to take ;) ).
Quoting Beebert
Yes, and behind the faith of the atheist in the non-existence of God is a deep seated and intense fear of responsibility for one's actions on Earth. -> See how reason is to be used? If the atheist critiques the believer for fearing death, the believer should critique the atheist for fearing responsibility and accountability for his actions. But this is nothing but rhetoric for even if true, such statements do not say anything about the truth of the underlying beliefs at all. But rhetoric is useful to move the will.
That is an important point. It's not about mutually exclusive truth claims, but rather that only one of them has access to the Truth (which is non-discursive).
That's good, justice is also needed.
Quoting Beebert
Aquinas did actually reject his philosophy at the end of his life and said it is all "like straw" compared to what God had revealed him. As I said, philosophy does have its place. Aquinas is good as a philosopher, but nothing more. If you had to choose a philosophy, it would be his.
Quoting Beebert
I would say Aristotle, Plato, Kierkegaard, Aquinas, Augustine, Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer, Pascal, Hamann, Sextus, Spinoza if i had to make a list of philosophers that are really worth reading. Perhaps also include the Stoics (Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, etc.). I would exclude N. despite the fact that he did, some of the time, achieve profundity. He was also mistaken about a great deal of things.
Sometimes - some forms of Scholasticism certainly can be.
Quoting Beebert
I wouldn't say he personally did this, but he did help in that movement and direction.
I think that's a bit fundamentalist itself. Sure, we can't proscribe the absolute but again, it doesn't mean there is none. I know you have recommended some great books on 'the sacred in nature', but we also need to relate the sacred to everyday life, which is one of the functions of religion and spirituality.
I discovered Rajneesh before the whole Osho thing, and wasn't taken in by him. Clever fellow, but not, in the vernacular, fair dinkum.
This is demonstrably false, since apophatic experiences of God require dogma to be interpreted, corrected and guided. Dogma =/ fundamentalism.
What part of Russian history isn't as I said? :s
Or here is another translation of the same quote: "Wherefore in order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned."
Would an orthodox christian dare to say something like that? How about I quote Starets Silouan, who IMO was a real saint. The following is told by Archimandrite Sophrony on page 48 of his book, St. Silouan the Athonite:
I remember a conversation between [Silouan] and a certain hermit who declared with evident satisfaction,
‘God will punish all atheists. They will burn in everlasting fire.’
Obviously upset, Silouan said,
‘Tell me, supposing you went to paradise, and there you looked down and saw someone burning in hell-fire – would you feel happy?’
‘It can’t be helped. It would be their own fault,’ said the hermit.
Silouan answered him in a sorrowful countenance:
‘Love could not bear that,’ he said. ‘We must pray for all.’
Here is another quote by Starets Silouan:
“If the Lord saved you along with the entire multitude of your brethren, and one of the enemies of Christ and the Church remained in the outer darkness, would you not, along with all the others, set yourself to imploring the Lord to save this one unrepentant brother? If you would not beseech Him day and night, then your heart is of iron—but there is no need for iron in paradise.”
It seems to me like Aquinas and Silouan didn't really worship the same God. I prefer the God of Silouan.
The movement was well under way, with or without him. He joined in it, but he by no means started it.
Quoting Beebert
Augustine & Aquinas did not hold the views of Calvin at all. Calvin largely misinterpreted them.
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1023.htm
Quoting Beebert
I think quite the opposite - Kant was wrong on most things and Aquinas was right on them.
Quoting Beebert
Seemingly, but I get a feeling you know Aquinas from Nietzsche rather than from reading him. He certainly explains what he means by that soon after:
When I see a criminal punished, I'm happy because justice is done, not because harm is done to a man. Love doesn't mean that we as a society will not punish the criminal, for if we do not punish him, that would entail allowing others to suffer because of him, and thus not loving them.
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/5094.htm
Quoting Beebert
I think he would.
Quoting Beebert
Sure, but Aquinas would not say the opposite. We naturally desire that all will repent and be saved by God - but unfortunately not all will. So we must pray for all - but not all will achieve salvation.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, yes you would beseech, but that doesn't mean it's practically possible to save him if he does not want to be saved.
Quoting Beebert
I think they worship the same God, but Silouan has a closer relationship with God and a deeper more mystical understanding, while Aquinas - at least in-so-far as his theology shows - is too trapped in the logical aspects of God. "Light" is relative to the plane of understanding - on the plane of understanding that Aquinas is on, God's logic is Light - but from a higher plane it is Darkness.
BTW, can you tell me this: Does God foreknow my destiny or not? Did he foreknow it eternally before I was born or not?
They followed the letter of the law, but not its spirit, thus they were not just.
Quoting Beebert
But justice can also be a cause of joy then? In fact, why wouldn't justice ALWAYS be a cause of joy if justice is something good?
Nietzsche did not understand Aquinas and Christianity very well - his understanding was always tainted by Luther. Nietzsche's morality was actually the opposite of just.
Okay good, so then Aquinas isn't wrong to say that the wicked going to hell is a cause of joy so long as their going to hell is just and not sadistic, right?
Why not? You're not contradicting yourself. You just said justice is a cause of joy, and now you're saying it's not :s
And a typical christian delivers to non-christians the following message: Jesus knocks on the door to my heart and says "Let me in", and I ask him: "Why?". To which he answers; "Because of what I will do to you if you don't let me in". I am not saying this is true, but that is the message one often hears. Because, Jesus claims he loves us all, and he commands us to love each other. Yet, if I don't love Jesus back, if I am not satisfied with being alive, if I prefer to not live and wish I was never born, then Jesus will let me me tormented forever, despite the fact that he created me without my consent, just because of the fact that I was born. It is absurd. So if I don't want to live forever, which I think I have the right to say to God, since I didn't even ask for being born, then I will instead be tormented forever and ever. Hmm... Have you christians understood the term "FOREVER"?
Sure, according to you (and me) not "fair dinkum", But that is the problem with the whole 'guru' thing; it's presented as objective fact as to whether these fellows are "enlightened' but really there is no objective fact of the matter; it's all subjective.
Quoting Wayfarer
The problem is that the absolute is conceived differently in the different traditions. What I mean to say is that there cannot be thought to be one cross-cultural universal absolute unless you are thinking fundamentalistically. I think the closest you could come to thinking such a thing without becoming fundamentalist would be to think that, although all religions are expressions of the truth, some are more all-encompassing and closer to the most truly 'human' than others. And this is pretty much what I do think about Christianity. I acknowledge that my thinking that is subjective. But I also think that such thoughts are like Kant's conception of aesthetic judgements of beauty, which, although they are subjective, inherently involve the thought that all subjects should, according to Kant, if only they could see aright, hold the same judgement.
This question of the intersubjective validity (which is the objectivity) of aesthetic, ethical and spiritual judgements is a very tricky path to traverse.
It depends on how it is interpreted. If it is interpreted "dogmatically" (in a fundamentalist way) then it is fundamentalism, obviously.
No, I don't think so. I think Ramana Maharishi was an authentic guru (not that I am a 'follower'.) And there are volumes of documentation about the abilities, sayings, stories, demonstrations, concerning spiritual teachers in diverse traditions, across culture and history. I understand the suspicion of gurus and authority figures generally but that can and does become another dogma. The western dogma is 'nihil ultra ego' - nothing beyond ego - buttressed by science. It all too easily ends up like that.
And, yes, the absolute is conceived differently in different traditions. But I think that the conclusion, therefore, they're all subjective or socially-conditioned or contradictory is not a sound conclusion. Yes, it's tricky,and there are many uncertainties. but there are reputable and sound spiritual teachers, just as there are phoneys and fakes. But there would be no fool's gold, if there were no gold.
//ps// actually I once got a book out of Fisher which was like a compendium/anthology of new religious movements and spiritual teachers. I'll look for it again later, it's a bit dated now but it was fascinating, and suitably critical.//
Quoting Beebert
That last sentence is the interpolation of preachers who adopt religious guise to impose their will on others.
Yes, but I'm not saying that. I'm saying that if someone misjudges the quality of a painting, for example, it's no big deal; but if they misjudge the quality of a guru it can have a devastating effect on their lives. In any case I don't personally believe in spiritual transmission from person to person, all people are too fallible for that; the personal relation with God is the most reliable way in my opinion. This is not to say that spiritual guidance cannot be received; but it should always be in a rational form; where one understands exactly why one is following a particular discipline, and exactly what is the personal relevance to them; a path should never be blindly followed.
Quoting Wayfarer
I haven't drawn that conclusion at all, though. There may or may not be reputable and sound teachers; but how do know whether they are one or the other; how do you know they are not themselves deluded, if you are not yourself enlightened (and even then?)? The analogy with gold doesn't work because gold can be tested to demonstrate that it is, in fact gold, and not fool's gold. Also it is possible, to continue the analogy, that there once was gold, but that now there is nothing but fool's gold in this "dharma-ending" age.
Kalama Sutta
I can agree with that; it tells me to live intuitively, skillfully, ethically, intelligently. In one or another, depending on cultural differences, of course, that is one universal truth expressed by all religions and sensible 'ways'.
I do think this is a blatant distortion of the Christian message.
Also consider the following. Some Christians are locked into their inherited understanding - they've long since lost any ability to stand back from them and think about what they really mean. That's what I meant before about mistaking the symbolic for the literal.
Consider the idea that when Jesus said 'I am the truth the light and the way' it doesn't literally refer only to Christians. 'The way and the truth' is not a Christian invention or possession; it is 'truth as distinct from falsehood' that is the subject. To paraphrase: no-one can realize the 'source of being' (i.e. 'Father') other than by facing the truth ('me'). But this is now clothed in the costume of religious dogma. As always, to mix metaphors, the vessel then becomes the focus of attention, not what is being carried by it. That is how we get caught up in the story-book mythology that you're trying to escape from.
None of that negates the essential truths of Christianity, but it does negate a lot of wrong-headed and misunderstood Christianity, which is plainly abundant.
I will also repeat the other point - that one way of understanding 'hell' is 'the deprivation of truth'. It is 'eternal' insofar as that it is up to us to find and follow the liberating truth of whichever spiritual tradition we're associated with. So the 'punishment' is wasting that opportunity. It's not a vindictive act by a jealous God, which is anthropomorphism.
http://wp.me/p1BgTd-9W
And another really good book, written by an ecumenical Christian, is Evil and the God of Love, by John Hick.
Quoting Beebert
Did you notice the quote from Augustine that I posted earlier, on the 'literal meaning of Genesis'?
When did Augustine write, again? Besides, none of the Anglican, Orthodox, or Catholic denominations subscribe to intelligent design, or deny evolutionary theory. (Darwin never made it onto the Prohibited Books List, not that it's much of a compliment.)
Quoting Beebert
You're obviously intelligent and thoughtful, do more reading. Understand that the kind of harsh fundamentalist Christianity you're reacting against is for some reason mainly characteristic of American conservative, or even reactionary, evangelicals (not that they're all bad, I rather like A W Tozer). But there are many other forms. I greatly enjoyed David Bentley Hart's most recent book, The Experience of God. He won't have a bar of any kind of ID. There are many others; on my kindle I have an interesting book called Without Buddha I could not be Christian by a Christian professor of theology, Paul F Knitter. There is in fact an entire sub-cultural genre of Buddhist Christianity nowadays.
All that said, I don't want to be an apologist for religion. But, if you're not materialist, then what are you? Serious question. Scientific materialism, the philosophy of the secular intelligentsia, is a baseless and groundless historical illusion. So keep an open mind by all means but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I am not a materialist, I do realize it is a shallow and stupid worldview. But I wouldnt yet call myself spiritual either I think. At this moment, I trust art. I trust Classical Music by Beethoven, Schubert, Bach and the likes. I trust literature written by Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Kafka, Cervantes etc. And if one understands art, it is impossible to be a materialist. The Only "godless" world I would be able to say has some intellectual value is that of Schopenhauer, Leopardi and Nietzsche. But I am quite sure that they were wrong too. I just have a problem with religious dogmaticism. And I am too selfish and weak to give up everything to follow Christ. I am for example not ready to give up music. Well, well. At least scientific materialism is out of the question. That is for sure. But superstition must also be out of the question.
There is no Buddhist Christianity, that's a very profound error right there. Christianity may have some similarities with Buddhism, however, because of the person of Jesus Christ, Christianity is ultimately entirely different.
You may both be interested to read this.
Why couldn't a Christian be influenced and inspired by Buddhism, in a way similar to being influenced by Taoism or the many teachings and forms of yoga, for example? Is there nothing to be gained, or is it simply impossible or heretical? If so, why?
Buddhism is good - as far as it goes. The problem is that it doesn't go far enough. I said Christianity is the most complete religion, not that there is no truth in other religions. All religions fundamentally try to relate with the divine.
Exactly. So if for example a Jewish or Christian believer can benefit from the study and/or practice of Buddhism and meditation, then it's a good thing. They haven't abandoned their faith, just deepened their spiritual practice, or at least they might say. The fact that Buddhism is not primarily a Theistic belief system actually make easier to pair with other religions. The only hindrance is in the mind, but that may be the biggest obstacle.
No, not really.
Yes really - you just don't know what you're talking about - there's a difference there.
https://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-Bolshevik-Revolution-Capitalists/dp/190557035X
No, not exactly - you've misunderstood once again what I've said.
Quoting 0 thru 9
No the Christian cannot benefit for himself from the study of Buddhism, since Christianity has everything that Buddhism has and much more through the person of Jesus Christ - Christianity also has meditation and prayer through for example the tradition of Hesychasm. However, the Christian can benefit from understanding another religion, seeing what's valuable in it, etc. - this even cements their faith for they see that there are partial revelations of God everywhere. But this is not to say that Buddhism can contribute towards their salvation if they are already Christians.
Quoting 0 thru 9
:s
Quoting Agustino
Are you disagreeing with yourself now because no one else is sufficient competition? :P Not sure what you mean here. Very many Western believers have benefited from studying and practicing Eastern religions and wisdom. So if that helps them and maybe prevents from ditching their faith entirely, that seems to be a plus.
Quoting Agustino
In my personal Roman Catholic experience at least, meditation and the other aspects of mind training were not in the forefront of the message or practice. The Eastern Orthodox tradition seems different, and that is good for the spiritual development of its followers. Also, Buddhism had a effect on Greek philosophy, and subsequently the Orthodox tradition, as you are doubtless aware. Wikipedia.
Don't know if you had mentioned that you had given meditation a serious try. Like the saying goes, if the water is allowed to remain unstirred, the mud will settle and there will be clarity. Also, what if you put all thoughts of hell, Calvin, Luther, etc out of your mind for a week? Maybe it might help. Just an idea for some peace.
It's as if you think that Russia just poofed into existence in the year 1918, and that all Western efforts to modernize Russian backwardness for the previous several centuries must therefore be evidences of your "liberals are taking over the world" tinfoil hat argument. Just cut the crap, Agustino. I know you're biased toward Orthodoxy and its traditions in Russia, but please refrain from hamfisting your world view into a history that's never going to agree with you.
:s
Quoting Heister Eggcart
There's no crap, that's the history, read it for yourself if you don't believe me. Why do you think Russia is so much anti-West? For no reason? :s
Also I'm very surprised you bring the "liberals" into discussion, there was no question of liberals here, but rather Western political intervention in the affairs of other countries/nations. And funny how you even agree with it - "Western efforts to modernize Russian backwardness" ...
:-d What's your point?
:-} I am in my homeland already
>:O There is a reason why I underlined "for himself" in that quote, which you don't seem to have put in your quote of me. Christians do not need Buddhism for their own personal salvation - however they may need Buddhism to better understand other religions, guide others towards the faith, fight against secularism, etc.
Quoting 0 thru 9
Not that many actually, they're definitely NOT the majority of believers.
Quoting 0 thru 9
I was thinking more along the lines of helping them see the benefits of Buddhism as partial revelations of God, which enables them to guide Buddhists (and other religions) towards the Truth, and appreciate the limited wisdom they already hold.
Quoting 0 thru 9
Yes.
@Thorongil
Quoting Thorongil
Quoting Thorongil
So what do you think about the following?
The problem is that one can't walk all the paths at once. It's impossible. So there must be some way to whittle down one's live options to those that would be the most worthy of testing. I don't see how to do that except by reason.
Quoting Agustino
Thanks, I'll see if I can take a look at it.
Quoting Agustino
I think you're using a somewhat inaccurate translation. "Evil" is translated as "calamity" and "woe" in other translations. I take it to refer to God's judgment that appears in a poetic portion of the book of Isaiah.
Sorry, I somehow missed your response here.
I would say there is a difference between sinning and turning away from God. No one is perfect. My point was only that perhaps after genuine repentance turning away from God is impossible; but that does not mean you will be absolutely sinless.
I haven't read the Bunyan book. And I am not a confirmed Christian in the sense of belonging to any particular church or congregation, although I do find Christianity the religion I feel closest to. I don't give much thought to afterlife; I think what is important is how you live this life. And I am convinced that nothing of real value can come out of fear.
Quoting Thorongil
Sorry I missed this earlier.
You started out by saying that the "permanent unchanging self" either exists or doesn't; isn't your treating it as a propositional claim based on your understanding of the "concept"? If you understand the concept then you can explain and critique it, no? If not then I don't see how you can justifiably treat it is a propositional claim in the first place.
Quoting Thorongil
Interpretations are always prior to any such attempts to "distinguish the true from the false".
Yes, but not through reason alone. Experience, and trying the path is also a valid way of doing that - as is listening to your intuition, which does not function by taking calculated steps as reason does.
Quoting Thorongil
I don't think it's a wrong translation, that word is translated as "evil" about 400 times through the Old Testament, more than any other translation. And the verse reads I form light, and create darkness (which are two opposites), before stating I form peace (harmony) and create evil (conflict).
Notice that "form" goes with peace and light, while "create" goes with darkness and evil. Why the difference? Maybe things that are formed are ontologically prior to things that are created after those are formed. In a certain sense this must be true. Remember the original Jewish conception of God wasn't anthropocentric - God wasn't a large teddy bear who hugs you. God was fearsome & incomprehensible. Remember also in Genesis that God created the light, and then separated the darkness from the light. So he formed the light, and THEN created darkness by separating the light from the dark.
And if not from God, then where does evil come from? Afterall it is God Who created the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is God Who created the possibility of good being perverted into evil, even if evil has no existence of its own. So God must be, ultimately, beyond good and evil - incomprehensible and unknowable - impossible to bound by language and logic - and the source of both, even if one has ontological primacy over the other. As such, God must be beyond logic and illogic - neither logical, nor illogical.
Have you ever considered the possibility that our finite minds cannot capture in thought the essence of "good"? What if our systems of morals are much as mathematics is - always and necessarily incomplete - and that a complete morality is one that is inconsistent and contradictory, much as Gödel showed mathematics to be? But yet, if a logical system cannot capture reality, that is not the fault of reality, but the limitation of human logic. I think syllogisms are problematic to begin with, so even denying the PNC isn't such a big deal then, because syllogistically proving anything doesn't mean much anymore - so the fact anything becomes provable syllogistically if we deny the PNC isn't very significant for someone who doesn't put much weight on logic to begin with - such as for example Sextus Empiricus. Once we deny that the PNC is absolute, then the principle of explosion (the consequence of denying the absoluteness of the PNC) itself becomes trivial and irrelevant.
Kierkegaard intimates to some of these ideas with his teleological suspension of the ethical - a God that is beyond good and evil.
False, this is absolutely what Kierkegaard would not say. K. is not an immoralist like Nietzsche. Quite the contrary, the highest man achieves a morality that is higher than mere social morality, and that morality is achieved through direct communion, submission and relationship with the Living God.
Quoting Beebert
So is it better to be a great artist, than to be a moral man?
Yes. A great artist is IMO better. Beethoven versus Aquinas? No contest as to who has done more good for humanity.
I don't call him so, he called himself that way ;)
Quoting Beebert
Does it have to do with the fact that Wagner was a Christian and Nietzsche thought of Christianity as a weakness? :P
Quoting Beebert
Why is writing beautiful music superior to living, effectively, the life of a monk and contemplation? Why do you have to "do more good for humanity"? If that was the only criteria, then certainly some political leaders would deserve the highest merits. Sometimes not doing anything - quite often most of the time - is better than doing something.
Nietzsche broke with Wagner to start with because of Wagner's anti-Semitic statements. Then after that, other things started to strengthen him in his revolt against Wagner, such as Wagner's increasing carreerism. I doubt Wagner was really Christian. That else rather one of his strategies. Being a friend of the catholic church for example helped one in one's career in that time.
Because music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music speaks for itself. It is pure. It doesn't complicate things. It saves lives. You don't have to do more good to humanity, but what purpose did Aquinas then fullfill? How can morality be more important than art if you also say that it is not important to so good for humanity? Political leaders have done more harm than good. I believe you know that too. I am not preaching some sort or utilitarianism here. I am talking about the inner life. Wasn't it Dostoyevsky who said that beauty will save the world? I do though believe that Aquinas was a utilitarist in the long run. At least his theology turned many in to that. Heavenly utilitarianism. Yes in Aquinas case IMO not doing anything would at least have been just as good. But without music, I agree with Nietzsche: life would be a mistake.
I would say that God can be and is responsible for evil, since he is responsible for his creation which contains evil. But that's different from saying that he commits evil, which is the word I used in the sentence you originally quoted of me.
Quoting Agustino
In his innermost essence, sure. But he reveals himself as a God of love.
Right.
Agreed.
Quoting Thorongil
Okay, also agreed :P
I never said we can interpret verses on their own, I'm not an advocate of Sola Scriptura.
Actually I want to clarify that I wasn't agreeing that you are justified in treating as a propositional claim, only that you could not even be justified in daring to mistakenly think it is, unless you believed you had some understanding of the concept.
Yes, this is what I got from your last post. Having now clarified, I don't disagree with you. Terms must be defined and mutually understood before being debated and used in arguments.
Not according to the doctrine of privation, which says that evil doesn't exist - what we see as evil is the mere privation of the good, which is compared to an illness, that being the absence of health, or darkness being the absence of light. I would like to believe that evil is solely a consequence of a defect in perception, which arises from mistaking the illusory for the real. Now if you refer to all the obvious evils in the world, it seems to me that they are all basically done by people - humans alone act out of evil intent. Calamities, disasters, and epidemics are not in that category. Contentious claim and I can't fully defend it but wanted to raise that objection.
:s And believing in the judgement of the "great man" certainly sounds like morality right? This great man of yours could trample under his feet everyone else in society, for, well, he was great, and so deserved more than his fellow human beings deserved.
Quoting Beebert
The way a doctor saves lives? I don't think so.
Quoting Beebert
He educated others and himself in the ways of God - that is a life well spent.
Quoting Beebert
Ah, and I thought you were a compassionate fellow seeing you cry about people burning in hell, but it seems that there's no problem with that anymore, so long as the "great man" is the one who burns them.
Well dont you let the big man God burn almost everyone? As I Said. You misunderstand what I am talking about
Yes, but that's a false assumption. Not everyone wants power. The character of Father Zossima from Dostoevsky's novel doesn't for example.
Quoting Beebert
So a natural force is moral? >:O >:O That sounds quite amoral to me actually.
Quoting Beebert
I did, and I found no moral values as such in it. It was beautiful, but did it teach me how to behave and how to love? :s Nope.
And what was Nietzsche's solution? The strong burning the weak in exchange? :P
Quoting Beebert
Catholicism =/ Christianity.
No, because God is not a man.
Show me proof that he agreed please.
Quoting Beebert
:s - I'm not talking about this, but if this "force of nature" of yours injures people around him, then he's immoral. The fact that he has musical gifts, or gifts of another nature, doesn't change the fact that he's a human person bound by the same moral rules as everyone else. As for listening to Beethoven, I have. As I said, I found no moral values there. You might wish to tell me what moral values you found there...
Ah, so if things really are that the strong burns the weak (because he's the strong, and hence can dominate the weak), then that's moral according to Nietzsche?
Right, so then regardless of whether one is weak or strong, morality is the same?
I can aummarize Nietzsche's moral views like this: He observed that thousands of years ago, People judged actions based on ord consequences. Then, with christianity a great thing happened: Actions should be judged not by its consequences foremost, but by the intentions of the one who commits the act. But Nietzsche observed that even this wasn't enough, but shallow. Actions should be judged by the irrational forces and unconcious motives that lies in the depth of the one committing the act. The "intentions" are never clear. They are just the surface.
How should we decipher the irrational forces and unconscious motives?
And furthermore, if they are irrational and unconscious, then it would follow that no morality is possible, for we cannot call something immoral unless it's under the control of the person's will.
Well you haven't really answered my questions...
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
Morality describes the rightness or wrongness of actions. As such, for morality to be relevant the person must undertake the respective action through their own will. If they are forced to do something then such an action cannot be considered moral or immoral, since they don't have a choice in the matter.
So what if they're not understood? That suddenly stops making them immoral or what? :s
:s - no I don't think so at all. Smerdyakov is guilty of murdering Fyodor Pavlovich, Ivan is guilty for teaching Smerdyakov that God is dead (for then everything is permitted), and so forth. They're all guilty and sinful - whether they know what they're doing or not.
I don't see how what D says disagrees with A&A.
Quoting Beebert
So then they are immoral.
Quoting Beebert
So this must be false.
No they're not unguilty in any way. I don't know where you take that from, D never suggests otherwise. Failure to love is exactly what they're doing.
Guilty = having committed a sin.
Guilty as in juridically guilty?
Of course.
Quoting Beebert
No, sorry, I don't think a psychopathic murderer is worthy of love in any common sense of the term.
Please translate this.
He didn't, that person became so, partly out of their own choice.
So what if He knew? It was still the man's free choice that made him so. God's foreknowledge does not mean lack of free will. The "morality" you're putting forth here is an abomination. Can you imagine, letting the unrepentant criminal who deserves the utmost punishment go? That is not justice, that is stupidity, cowardice, and injustice masquerading itself as benevolence. Benevolence towards everyone, except the criminal's victims.
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/religion/chapter6.html
Also, so called natural evil is not to be ignored. As David Bentley Hart says,
This perhaps more than anything else forms the greatest barrier to my possible conversion.
He wills you to have free will, exactly. Therefore He cannot control what you do with your free will, if He did, you wouldn't have free will to begin with. It's really quite a simple thing, I don't know why you don't get it. It's not God's fault that someone is a rapist, etc. etc. - it's their fault for making that choice.
And to preempt an objection - if He knows you will misuse your free will and chooses not to create you, then His creatures effectively don't have free will. So either way, if God wants His creatures to have free will, evil must exist and be possible.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, from a limited human understanding. Apparently, God doesn't think so. He thinks free will is worth hell.
:s That's a red herring, since the situation with God isn't the same. Vice is punishment for itself, and virtue is reward in itself. If someone rapes, etc. then he will get punished, by other people, and by the damage his crime does on his own soul. People punish themselves, and its righteous that we are so constituted such that evil leads to destruction.
Quoting Beebert
It's uncertain what "eternal" means. It certainly doesn't mean infinite temporal duration, but more like timelessness.
Quoting Beebert
Nope, it's just that evil has to be rewarded with evil, unless there is repentance.
It's an interesting question... Is God beyond good and evil?
I can see this being answered both affirmatively and negatively. I don't know.
I did notice this before. But you seem to have a very rationalistic/Kantian position with regards to morality. What if true morality is - dare I say - contradictory? For example, I remember you sent me Kant's commentary on the story of Abraham and Isaac - that's also a very rationalistic way of thinking and seeing morality. Kierkegaard's version though - as expounded in Fear and Trembling - is less trapped by the boundaries of human rationality, and opens up into an authentic relationship with the Divine.
Eternity is timelessness, I understand that. So then eternity belongs to the one living in the presence without expecting something of the future? So then Perhaps there is an end to the punishment? Or is eternity fixed and without movement? Static, that is?
Didnt Christ say "Do not resort evil "? And yet evil must be repayed with evil?
No, God doesn't think from the perspective of one single human, but rather from the perspective of the whole of Creation. But even from the perspective of one human being, yes that may be better.
Quoting Beebert
That wouldn't change that He is God, and you are just a human being.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, because in that case you're showing that you're not very wise.
Quoting Beebert
No He didn't create you that way. He created you with free will. You're using your freedom in that manner right now. Why? You could stop doing that for example.
Quoting Beebert
It can't be - you have free will.
Quoting Beebert
You would be a fool if you repaid, say, a criminal who has raped, tortured and killed hundreds of people with anything but justice. Justice can entail harming another. Evil is not to be trifled with, it must be squished and eradicated. If you let evil grow, it will overtake you and your society and destroy you.
Way to miss the point entirely, >:O
I don't see a question.
No, it's not at all just to act police. But Justice is part of Goodness.
Quoting Beebert
So if you don't believe in free will, then you refuse to accept the Christian conception of the world, and thus you cannot condemn the Christian God in good faith if you don't at least accept the framework of Christianity.
Quoting Beebert
Yeah, what's bad about punishing immorality? That sounds like something great to me.
A man needn't ask outright for a substantive answer, such is a subtle expectation, which is why I asked for more substance, seeing as you didn't understand the video.
Quoting Agustino
Accepting the "Christian" conception of the world makes you a Christian. Clearly one can condemn the validity of a position without holding to be true the position's framework.
Quoting Agustino
Because morality exists as a result of God's existence, his essence which is to create. God facilitates evil's presence in the world, and so he is ultimately responsible for that evil. This does not, however, remove the problem of evil from us - our actions still carry weight, but such weighted actions need not have ever been were God not to be at all.
And btw Schopenhauer is wrong that "the Jews" don't accept reincarnation - actually surprisingly, the Jews do accept reincarnation, it's Christians who don't. His religious anthropology isn't very good.
And the fact he thinks the Chinese laugh at the assertions of the Christians, etc. is utterly false. Christianity is the world's biggest religion, many times bigger than Buddhism, and very successful at the moment in Asia and Latin America, where most of the conversions are happening. The largest number of deconversions are in the West, but the West isn't telling of the whole world. In addition, Christianity and Islam are the only two religion posed to either grow or maintain their share of the world's population, all other religions, including Buddhism, are in decline.
No, but if he wants to criticise the Christian God for allowing evil, then he cannot deny free will, cause free will is an essential aspect of the Christian framework. This in effect means that he's not even criticising the Christian God.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Ok.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Well I don't find the video particularly meaningful to the problem of free will and theodicy. I don't feel God asks you to do something that is harmful to you.
The fact that God knows how you will use your free will does NOT mean you're condemned to a certain destiny. You still have free will and you will choose, however God is aware of what you will freely choose. This isn't to say that he controls it, or determines it in any way. He doesn't. Knowing something isn't the same with causing it to be so.
Quoting Beebert
It is quite clear actually if you study Apostolic Tradition, use your reason and read Scripture.
Quoting Beebert
Well yeah, you're not the first to say that: "Truly, You are a God who hides Himself, O God of Israel, Savior!" Isaiah 45:15. So this is what Christians are already aware of. Come up with something new!
Quoting Agustino
I quite honestly don't understand what you're talking about here. Natural evil has been a problem for the theist for thousands of years and has become ever more problematic with the advent of modern biology and evolutionary theory.
Why is it immoral for people to die in an earthquake? I'd say that's amoral, but not immoral, for to claim it is immoral would be to claim that the earthquake is a moral agent.
?? Beebert doesn't adhere to free will. I don't believe he or anyone else is suggesting that, at the very least, Christians do not believe in free will themselves.
Quoting Agustino
There's just enough substance in this reply for me to in turn write this reply and...nothing more, hmm...this exchange is definitely molto produttivo.
Quoting Agustino
Yes, I think he does. He, as being itself, makes you be and then forces you into making the choice of whether you then want to follow him or not. If you say no, you're damned. If you say yes, all's well then, it is hoped. But the key is that you are told that you can choose, but in the end your will won't be done as God's will is above yours. In other words, you choose a choice unwilled.
And he's criticising the Christian God based on his belief that we don't have free will? :s That makes no sense, because according to the Christian God, we do have free will. So if he wants to criticise the Christian God - and not some other God - then he should take the contents of revelation as presented.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
X-) I like to keep you in suspense...
Quoting Heister Eggcart
I'm not quite sure what God Himself is. The Trinity is a logical contradiction, I'd doubt that our finite human reason could comprehend God. God is unknowable and incomprehensible in Himself. Now, being separated from God is being damned - and that's no action of God's, it is what you yourself will.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
That's false, it will be your will, that's why God has given you free will, and you're formed in the image of God.
Is God the cause of the earthquake? If so, then there is a "moral" agent behind it: The creator of morality! If I throw a Stone at someone and that someone dies, then are you suggesting that the act is amoral rather than immoral because the stone is not a moral agent?
:s :s :s He tried to come up with it? Don't kid yourself, Boheme, Eckhart, Pseudo-Dyonisyus etc. have already thought through that way before Berdyaev.
Quoting Beebert
No, I actually don't.
Quoting Beebert
He addressed a strawman.
Quoting Beebert
Because He is a hidden God.
Quoting Beebert
No. Plate tectonics are the cause of the Earthquake.
Quoting Beebert
No, because you threw the stone, and you are a moral agent. The stone can't throw itself. If it could, then yes, a stone knocking someone's head would be amoral.
That depends it's not as simple as you put it out to be. Eckhart for example takes the Godhead to be a different referent than God. You overly simplify, the same way Schopenhauer does in that essay. That's why what you're saying is such a non-sequitur and so crude.
How does earthquakes fit Into God's plan? Are they a result of the fall or just something God lets happen for some strange reason?
Crude? Why so? Tell me more. Enlighten me, because you obviously know the truth as a Christian.
:s where do you take this from?
Quoting Beebert
He wasn't officially condemned as a heretic, some of his writings however were.
Quoting Beebert
It absolutely is, because the things he addressed there are misunderstandings of actual Christian views.
Quoting Beebert
I would if you have more specific questions. It would be hard for me to guess what you need enlightenment on, and if I were to address each and every one of S's points there, and correct the way he lays out the issues, it would take me a very long post. So specifics would be helpful.
Quoting Beebert
Why do you suppose I should know how the earthquake fits into God's plan? :s
But he doesn't believe in the Christian God.............................
Quoting Agustino
I know that bullshitting answers can take some time. I have patience, don't worry.
Quoting Agustino
Yet, you still proclaim to know what he wants of us, and that Beebert and I are wrong and that you (and God) are right.
Quoting Agustino
I think that we have the freedom of choice, but not the freedom to will our will. Because we cannot will our will, we cannot will our will to be, nor even to not be. Presumably only God has the authority to will one's will, which means we've, in fact, no free will in the sense that I can perfectly choose what comes of my being and my will. I don't. And in a world where only God has the authority to will will, we really are just slaves set on a path until our legs tire and we die.
Sure, so? If he wants to criticise the Christian God on moral matters, then he should take the moral framework that Christians hold to, not one that he has invented.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Did you get high marks at school just because you had a long time to answer the questions? X-)
Quoting Heister Eggcart
In some regards yes, but not in all of them. With regards to morality - at least the morality we speak about - yes.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
No, you don't control the general tendencies you or your mind has. But you can still choose to give in to them or resist them. For example, if you're a person who is very tormented by lust, you may not choose that, but you certainly do choose whether you give in to it or not.
+1
This is 100 percent true. Though I would say "We most often have the freedom of choice in situations where a clear choice can be made between A and B".
But the will then isnt Free, because I cant will whatever I want to Will. I can start doing as ascetics and fast and starve myself in order to kill my Will maybe. But to call that free will... That is very unenlightened.
That's a strawman right there. For Christians never meant that your free will is your ability to control what desires you find yourself having, but rather your ability to control whether or not you ACT on those desires.
Many ways, you can't possibly expect from me a critique of that whole essay in a forum post. Ask me specific questions please.
Have you studied all mystics? :s
But didnt Jesus condemn not only the actions but the inclinations towards an action too?
BTW, you lie about me saying I criticize christianity on invented basis. That I should take the moral framework that Christians hold to, not one that I have invented. I don't invent. Critizicing free will as a concept is part of my critique against christianity's "moral framework", because if fails to tell the truth already there.
Do I Believe in the Christian God? I certainly have no faith in him, but that doesnt mean I dont Believe he exists. I am not sure whether or not be exists.
No I have not read all mystics. So? Have you?
Anyway, despite having said that, there may actually be moral agents in involved. An idea I have found intriguing is that Satan and his fallen angels are behind what is labeled natural evil. See here: http://reknew.org/2008/01/satan-and-the-corruption-of-nature-seven-arguments/
Regardless, there is still a problem here. I would refer you to the DBH quote once again.
Then you should adhere to trinitarian theology, heretic.
Quoting Agustino
I wasn't aware that The Philosophy Forum is the same as school.
Quoting Agustino
Edit: Hmm, gif won't work. So I'll write it out. Fuck you!
Quoting Agustino
lolno.
Let me guess, you also think that narcissists choose whether to lie or not, or that someone suffering from bipolar disorder can pause right before a manic episode whether or not they're going to lose their mind. Sure. Makes total sense, (Y)
No. Looking (actively) after a woman with lust is an action, not just a desire or an inclination.
Quoting Beebert
That's a strawman though.
Quoting Beebert
No, but I don't make claims about who the greatest mystic is.
I do believe in the Trinity, so I'm not sure what you meant :s
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Fail X-)
Quoting Heister Eggcart
I'm not very familiar with bipolar so I won't comment. But narcissists CAN choose whether to lie or not. They have a tendency towards lying, meaning that's the first thing that comes to their minds, but that doesn't mean they cannot oppose that tendency and not act on it.
CBT and all of therapy pretty much is predicated on this metacognitive ability.
Thanks, that looks quite detailed, will have a look soon!
Quoting Thorongil
DBH?
Yes I will call all your statements strawmen if you keep strawmanning. That's not under my control what you say or do. But to say for example that you don't decide what you desire, and therefore you don't have free will (in the Christian sense) is a shameless strawman.
Free will=free choice?
Free will = possibility of making a choice, yes.
Yes. If you can make a choice, you have free will.
Ah okay, I see, thanks for clarifying that. I agree with that quote, but obviously I don't think the actions in themselves of earthquakes, etc. are immoral. Rather they're amoral. But obviously from the POV of humans it's not right to be killed if you are innocent - and volcanoes, earthquakes, etc. take no regard of whether you're innocent or not. So it's a problem in-so-far as it's a harm, but if there is no intention behind it, it cannot be morally evil.
To my ears, creation ex nihilo is a mockery of the whole concept of freedom. And of Free will.
Quoting Agustino
2+2=5 is a logical contradiction, do you believe that, too? >:O
If I believe whether it's possible, then maybe! X-) God doesn't have the limitations of logic, being the source of both logic and illogic.
Agu, just c'mon, please stop being dumb.
What does creation ex nihilo have to do with free will?
Quoting Beebert
No I don't say that. You need grace to hear about God, but you've already heard about God. I don't think God withholds grace from anyone.
Quoting Beebert
Simple. Keep wanting that, but don't act on it. You don't control what you want. So you pray for the strength to resist that urge/temptation, and for God to hopefully lift it away (but this may never be granted - the possibility of not acting on the urge and discovering your own freedom through that is sufficient). Also, if you don't get a miracle for yourself, you may be a miracle for someone else, by showing them that it is possible to live with such a condition!
Quoting Beebert
God may certainly want this. Resisting the urge/temptation is a great thing - it is finding your own freedom. Your own freedom cannot be found except in the opposition to such urges.
Yeah so what? :s logical possibility tells me jack shit about anything anyway. It's logically possible I'll wake up a duck tomorrow, logically possible the sun won't rise, etc. etc. Logical possibility is such bullshit anyway, might as well get rid of it completely. Utter nonsense this logical possibility, tells me jack shit about the world.
No, you are not free to choose whether you WANT to exist eternally or not, but you are absolutely free to choose how you will act. That's what free will means.
Nope, I've already outline why that's not the case.
"extend"? I thought we've already clarified eternity isn't infinite temporal duration.
Quoting Beebert
You're given the opportunity to play a part, do you want to waste it?
We've already gone through this. Please re-read the corresponding answer. You've never addressed it.
Life after death doesn't necessarily mean it is like this life, especially if it's not a life in TIME.
No, you are honestly given the opportunity to do something good. Going to hell is throwing it away.
Quoting Beebert
Why not? You keep telling me about the NT writers, that doesn't matter. The OT and NT were never meant to be stand-alone - they need to be read and understood through the lens of Apostolic Tradition.
I can't answer your questions. We'll have to wait and see. Clearly talk of "end" or "beginning" is pointless with regards to eternity.
I told you Why in the same post. Because the writers of the New Testament are extremely ungifted writers if what you claim about its meaning is true. Though you might absolutely be right. It is quite obvious that the writers of the New Testament werent exactly literary geniuses or geniuses of prose and poetry. Just read the Book of revelation. It really is a disgusting little piece of literature as far as beauty of writing is concerned. Its moral message isnt any better.
From God's perspective yes. From your perspective no.
I think the message of Revelation is great. The wicked will be destroyed, what's bad about that?! If a criminal is arrested and put in jail to rot there, will you cry or rejoice? I would rejoice, because we've been freed of an evil man who was harming us!
It was exceedingly clear to people who were familiar with Tradition. The NT - such as Paul's letters - were given to communities which were ALREADY Christian. How did they become Christian? By the oral teachings of the Apostolic Tradition. The writings they received were meant only as further guidance, to be interpreted in the light of Tradition. It is through Tradition that they first became Christians, not through reading Paul's letters. So it may be difficult for you to interpret because you don't understand the metaphors that are used, but those who have the support of Tradition do.
That's not what John says.
Quoting Beebert
You have a very strange morality then. Clearly getting rid of evil is a good thing, not a bad thing. Would you rather that the criminal torment his innocent victims?! :s
Nope. Christianity has been very successful, so clearly that "remote" part of the Middle East wasn't so remote at all. It's the world's largest religion, and has spread today in all corners of the world - and it's spreading at a super-fast rate in the developing world.
No I didn't say that. I said it's not the deepest and most authentic form of Christianity, not that it's not Christianity. Catholics are going to Heaven.
Yes, but I wouldnt cry over a crimimal going to hell, I would cry over the true reason why People put him in jail: In order for him to rot. And the same is the problem with Christian morality and eschatology. Their enemies arent just put in jail in order to realize their wrong doings and regret them and then be rehabilitated. No, they are supposed to rot.
"That's not what John says."
Oh it seems so to me
That's what he deserves no? Why would he deserve anything better?
Oh it was remote. So remote that all those hideous things had to happen in western Europe that I mentioned. BTW, since when did amount of members mean success? Was the inquisition a success?
If I live a life alone in the Woods from the age of 0 to 40 and never injure Another man, and then I die at that age without believing in God and Christ, I am going to hell right? So I deserve to rot just because I dont accept God's creation for example?
Why can't there be a mountain range with no valleys? That would be just great - everything would be 'up', there would be no 'down'. The other great advantage is, you couldn't fall off anything.
I'll see your D.B Hart, and raise you a Horkheimer:
Eclipse of Reason
Quoting Thorongil
What 'religion' tells you, is that 'the world' is illusory. Not 'merely' illusory, but deeply and profoundly illusory, an illusion to which we have a visceral tie and in which we're deeply invested. Nowadays, man has put nature in the place of the holy, and worships and reveres the material universe, and then is uncomprehending and indignant when time devours and destroys everything he holds dear.
That's certainly part of the criteria of success. If Christianity is true, and God communicates through Christianity, then presumably Christianity couldn't be a small religion followed by very few people, but would rather reach out to a large number of people, and that's exactly what we see today.
Quoting Beebert
No, because it diminished the number of Christians, amongst other things.
Quoting Beebert
I don't know, I'd tend to believe you're more likely to go to heaven to be honest.
It's hard to say, we're not given any kind of certain knowledge about who achieves salvation and who doesn't. There's a gentile for example talked about in Scripture called Cornelius, and he was called righteous and pleasing to God before he heard about Christ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_Christian
Yes, but you have to understand that those views do not - absolutely do not - suggest that unrepentant criminals, rapists, mass-murderers, torturers, child molesters, etc. are going to heaven - they certainly are not.
That's not for you to say.
So you think they will be going to Heaven? :s That's impossible, if they are immoral and unrepentant that they will reach Heaven.
No, it's not. You don't know their internal state, only God does. Why don't you let him be the judge?
I haven't judged my neighbour, I've judged abstractly. If someone really is an unrepentant criminal of the kind I've described, they will be destined for hell. Of course, I cannot judge particular instances, only God would know their hearts.
Quoting Thorongil
I do, I haven't judged individual people. All I said is if someone were to be TRUTHFULLY described as an unrepentant criminal, then they will not go to Heaven.
Judgement is judgement, and you're judging a soul into hell, which is not your place to do.
Which soul?
And which one is that?
I'm not playing dumb, I'm getting you to see that I've actually judged no soul. I said a general statement. A general statement only becomes a judgement when applied to particulars, otherwise it's just a general statement. I did not suggest I can apply it to particulars, for I would not know what is in their hearts.
No, I actually said UNREPENTANT criminals are not going to Heaven. And yes, I hold by that statement. All unrepentant criminals will not be in Heaven.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
:s Have you left your logic in the drain? If I am not an unrepentant criminal, it wouldn't follow that I'm going to Heaven necessarily. If A is a B (an unrepentant criminal is a hell-destined sinful person), it doesn't follow that C (something other than a criminal) isn't a B (a hell destined sinful person).
It's a judgement, not a statement. Also, how do you know that unrepentant criminals won't be in heaven?
Quoting Agustino
No, I thought that was you, considering the tenor of your posts yesterday.
Quoting Agustino
None of this follows at all because you have no knowledge of who does and does not go to heaven. Period. Only God does, which means that you are in no place to pass judgement on those whose fates you have no knowledge of.
How could they be? Is it possible to be forgiven of your sins if you do not repent? The Bible and Christian tradition certainly doesn't indicate so.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
X-) Don't confuse. I take logic to be valuable and useful, but in a limited way. Logic isn't an absolute for me. It's not an absolute judge. Logic, just like our other capacities, is also fallible. For example, the Trinity is contradictory, but I think the Trinity is right and logic wrong. I also gave you the quantum mechanics example.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
I don't know which individual people will go to Heaven, I agree. But that's because I cannot know if an individual person fits the description of unrepentant criminal with 100% certainty. If I could know that about a particular person, then I could say if they're going to Heaven or not.
I don't know, and neither do you. That has been my point.
Quoting Agustino
Um, no you don't agree. You've already said that unrepentant criminals won't go to heaven which entails you having knowledge of such being a certainty.
Yes I do have such knowledge, but I do not have the knowledge of who actually is an unrepentant criminal. I cannot tell you this man or that man, etc. won't be in Heaven.
orly?
Quoting Agustino
Oh, so maybe you're an unrepentant criminal. Better prepare yourself for the possibility of the flames.
Quoting Agustino
Okay, good, which includes you too, (Y)
I said I cannot know this with certainty. I may be one, but I don't think so. Low probability.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Absolutely! I don't know if I will be in Heaven. But I do hope I will be.
I read this in Trump's voice.
Quoting Agustino
I hope we won't be together. Otherwise, I'll have to pull a Satan.
~
1 Corinthians 13:6, Love [...] keeps no record of wrongs.
Sounds like hell is empty of souls, methinks. If God is love, then I wonder why he is said to keep a record of our wrongs throughout our lives in order to then judge which afterlife we go to. It appears as though God is, in fact, all forgiving, which is a quality I on't think Buddha can match, so Jesus > Buddha.
That should be "mehopes," from a Christian perspective. There's no reason to think it empty or not empty. You simply don't and can't know. Hell still serves as a necessary admonition, though.
Probably also a member of the Church Invisible. I like that: anonymous members of an invisible church, known only to God. Sounds like my kind of religion.
Agustino might have asked you if there is an invisible pony club if I hadn't beaten him to it. Of course this question in no way reflects my views, it just occurred to me as a funny thought. O:)
Then why does Jesus say that narrow is the path that leads to salvation and wide is the path the leads unto destruction? Why did he say that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God? Why are there more mentions of hell in the New Testament, than in the Old Testament?
Well, salvation would be achieved in this life no?
Ultimately, toxic shame eats away at the sacredness of that personhood that you expressed. I personally think that personhood (I would say personality or individuality) is the highest value of Christianity precisely because Christ was God incarnated in an individual person. The sheer depth of symbolical significance of that fact, within the context of history, is staggering. It creates a connection between God and man; man has a need for God, but God also has a need for man. The notion that man's need for God is not reciprocated for need on God's end is nonsensical. Man has zero value if God does not assign value to him, and God cannot assign value to man without having a need. Any value assigned without need would be purely theoretical; value means need.
What all of this has to do with organized religion is anathema to me, at this point. I've had similar experiences to what you describe. I also resonate with the feeling of having "lost faith", and yet still finding belief in Christ to exist within myself. I've had a long, painful journey of coming to terms with these contradictory experiences, but to come to the realization that a belief exists, deeply within me, a belief in Christ, despite everything, has been a huge comfort. I sense that you're wrestling in possibly a similar way. There's a name for our ilk; "Doubting Thomas". Just think about the depth of Thomas's faith after having seen the wounds of Jesus with his own eyes. This is the beauty of our doubt; it leads us into deeper Truth. Keep it up."
Thank you a lot for this post. It resonates very well with me. I thank you.
Christianity is all about the person since Christ revealed the divinity inherent in all people. And not all Christians, or even all Catholic scholars, believe in eternal torment. So, Christianity begins with man in a near-exalted state.
Sin can be terribly expressed or dealt with by obtuse clergy, but all Abrahamic religions have a notion of distance from God and our suffering from it. Even Secular Humanists like myself have a notion of sin in which we hold certain states--murderous, deceitful, racist, homophobic, violent, terrible parents--as states of sing--that people need recovery from and sometimes punishment for.
This is not Christ's conquest to many Christians. To many, it is showing us that true divinity in men isn[ power, wealth, or violence, but rather kindness, compassion, and empathy.
This is not Catholic belief at all as the Trinity demands God's need for man since part of himself, Christ, is human and that part, as well as humans, give God the opportunity to love within and without Himself.
No problem.
You're quoting me there, not Beebert, fyi.
Quoting John Harris
This is theologically true, but not really the case in the general zeitgeist of the faith, which is what I was commenting on. I already made the distinction later on in that post.
Quoting John Harris
Yes, that's what I was saying.
Quoting John Harris
I was talking about the general Protestant view.
Sure it is, and grouping members of all the various Christian groups in one gestalt is a mistake and a poor indicator. Many Christians, particularly American Christians, have a very exuberant Christianity seeing it as something that both lifts them spiritually and even (incorrectly) offers them greater chance for material success.
But you said Christian, and Catholics are Christians, and even most Protestants believe in the dynamics of the Trinity; they're not Arian heretics.
So you're saying it is, in fact, "the general zeitgeist of the faith", and then saying I shouldn't group "members of the various Christian groups in one gestalt". Which is it?
A notable exception would be traditional--not so much contemporary--Irish Catholicism that does focus on the negative, fallen state and the torments of sin.
I disagree, but again, we're making wide sweeping statements here. My personal experience within Christian protestantism revealed a hidden shame that was lying underneath the outward exuberance. And that shame is latent in the way the American church at large interprets scripture, I think.
Ugh
You can disagree, but you'd be wrong, and when you disagree you are making wide sweeping statements here, so I guess we'll keep making them.
Anyone should know that personal anecdotal experience is not sufficient evidence to speak for a group. And no, it does not--except the fundamentalists--hide a hidden shame or interpret scripture to find it, and most Christians don't go looking for it.
Looking for a date son?
Again personal experience is never enough to speak for the realities of the group. Using that logic, a woman who was raped by a police officer could say all police officers rape women.
Incidentally, I think she may be right :-O
[hide="Reveal"]>:O[/hide]
No, mostly they don't, and if they do go negative it's usually on "guilt,' not "shame"...very different things. The reality is most Christians, including American ones, don't want to be told how awful they are all, or even a lot of the time. The biggest sellers of Christianity are "you're special," "you're going to a good place," and "you have a God who loves you." They may mix in some guilt here or there, but not enough to hurt attendance.
>:O
Quoting John Harris
Quoting John Harris
Quoting John Harris
You continue to generalize. Are your generalizations based on pew research data or something, or are they based on your personal experience?
I'm sure John Piper could set me up with a fine young Christian lass.
Oh... I was thinking more with the man himself :P
Yikes.
You can disagree, but you'd be wrong,
— John Harris
Yes, you can disagree, but you'd be wrong, and no childish--are you over 18?--emolji changes that.
I continue to generalize because you continued to generalized in the bold quote below. The only difference is my generalizations are accurate. Are your generalizations based on pew research data or something, or are they based on your personal experience? Because personal experience certainly wouldn't suffice.
I dunno, I guess we're done debating this topic? As you've offered no actual points for me to address here.
Quoting John Harris
Actually, I have--in my last post, and in the post before where you ignored the part below. But since you've offered no actual points, we're definitely done.
What I mean is that you're making assertions instead of crafting an argument. Initially you made some arguments, which I responded to.
I disagree, but again, we're making wide sweeping statements here.
?Noble Dust
>:O
?Noble Dust
I have experienced Christianity this way, so it must be that way for everyone.
No, that's been you, and you did it again in your quote above.
See:
Quoting John Harris
Quoting John Harris
Quoting John Harris
The main difference is my statements are true.
Ah, now I get it.
8-)
:-$
And this isn't an assertion; it is a crafted argument. However, feel free to counter and show how the experience of one person can speak for an entire group.