On Nietzsche...
Quoting Erik
I've read quite a lot of Nietzsche, but over the years I've found his philosophy to be less and less defensible, despite protestations to the contrary. Sure, you can find gold in some of Nietzsche's aphorisms - taken apart from everything else he has said. But if you look at his "system" (if you can even call it that), then it is profoundly repugnant, and has no sense of ethics or morality. Indeed, if I - or anyone else - were to say similar things to the things Nietzsche wrote, I'm sure as hell we'd get banned from this forum.
Here's a sample:
And his later works seem to be littered with stuff like this. There is secondary literature that tries to rescue Nietzsche, but that always seems to be done by avoiding the "hard" passages. I mean does anyone have a doubt that these passages from Nietzsche are repugnant and utterly false?
Out of all of Nietzsche's works, my favorite seems to be his very first, the Birth of Tragedy. The later Nietzsche seems like a power-crazed insane man quite often. Not to mention that I find pretty much his entire GM to be pathetic, even intellectually - the first two parts for sure.
But perhaps we can discuss the merits (or lack thereof) of Nietzsche's thinking somewhere else?
Like start a new topic or something. :)
I've read quite a lot of Nietzsche, but over the years I've found his philosophy to be less and less defensible, despite protestations to the contrary. Sure, you can find gold in some of Nietzsche's aphorisms - taken apart from everything else he has said. But if you look at his "system" (if you can even call it that), then it is profoundly repugnant, and has no sense of ethics or morality. Indeed, if I - or anyone else - were to say similar things to the things Nietzsche wrote, I'm sure as hell we'd get banned from this forum.
Here's a sample:
Genealogy of Morality: To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle [...] Without cruelty there is no festival.
GM:...it should be clearly understood that in the days when people were unashamed of their cruelty life was a great deal more enjoyable than it is now in the heyday of pessimism... the bog of morbid finickiness and moralistic drivel which has alienated man from his natural instincts... Nowadays, when suffering is invariably quoted as the chief argument against existence, it might be well to recall the days when matters were judged from the opposite point of view; when people would not have missed for anything the pleasure of inflicting suffering, in which they saw a powerful agent, the principal inducement to living. By way of comfort to the milksops, I would also venture the suggestion that in those days pain did not hurt as much as it does today; at all events, such is the opinion of a doctor who has treated Negroes for complicated internal inflammations which would have driven the most stoical Europeans to distraction -- the assumption here being that the negro represents an earlier phase of human development ... For my part, I am convinced that, compared with one night's pain endured by a hysterical bluestocking, all the suffering of all the animals that have been used to date for scientific experiments is as nothing.
GM:No act of violence, rape, exploitation, destruction, is intrinsically "unjust," since life itself is violent, rapacious, exploitative, and destructive and cannot be conceived otherwise. Even more disturbingly, we have to admit that from the biological point of view legal conditions are necessarily exceptional conditions, since they limit the radical life-will bent on power and must finally subserve, as means, life's collective purpose, which is to create greater power constellations. To accept any legal system as sovereign and universal -- to accept it, not merely as an instrument in the struggle of power complexes, but as a weapon against struggle (in the sense of Dühring's communist cliché that every will must regard every other will as its equal) -- is an anti-vital principle which can only bring about man's utter demoralization and, indirectly, a reign of nothingness.
GM:For these same men who, amongst themselves, are so strictly constrained by custom, worship, ritual, gratitude, and by mutual surveillance and jealousy, who are so resourceful in consideration, tenderness, loyalty, pride and friendship, when once they step outside their circle become little better than uncaged beasts of prey. Once abroad in the wilderness, they revel in the freedom from social constraint and compensate for their long confinement in the quietude of their own community. They revert to the innocence of wild animals: we can imagine them returning from an orgy of murder, arson, rape, and torture, jubilant and at peace with themselves as though they had committed a fraternity prank convinced, moreover, that the poets for a long time to come will have something to sing about and to praise. Deep within all the noble races there lurks the beast of prey, bent on spoil and conquest. This hidden urge has to be satisfied from time to time, the beast let loose in the wilderness.This goes as well for the Roman, Arabian, German, Japanese nobility as for the Homeric heroes and the Scandinavian vikings. The noble races have everywhere left in their wake the catchword "barbarian." ... their utter indifference to safety and comfort, their terrible pleasure in destruction, their taste for cruelty -- all these traits are embodied by their victims in the image of the "barbarian," and "evil enemy," the Goth or the Vandal. The profound and icy suspicion which the German arouses as soon as he assumes power
Will to Power:The states in which we infuse a transfiguration and a fullness into things and poetize about them until they reflect back our fullness and joy in life...three elements principally: sexuality, intoxication and cruelty - all belonging to the oldest festal joys.
And his later works seem to be littered with stuff like this. There is secondary literature that tries to rescue Nietzsche, but that always seems to be done by avoiding the "hard" passages. I mean does anyone have a doubt that these passages from Nietzsche are repugnant and utterly false?
Out of all of Nietzsche's works, my favorite seems to be his very first, the Birth of Tragedy. The later Nietzsche seems like a power-crazed insane man quite often. Not to mention that I find pretty much his entire GM to be pathetic, even intellectually - the first two parts for sure.
Comments (308)
[quote=Marianne Cowan, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks]The Birth of Tragedy presented a view of the Greeks so alien to the spirit of the time and to the ideals of its scholarship that it blighted Nietzsche's entire academic career. It provoked pamphlets and counter-pamphlets attacking him on the grounds of common sense, scholarship and sanity. For a time, Nietzsche, then a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel, had no students in his field. His lectures were sabotaged by German philosophy professors who advised their students not to show up for Nietzsche's courses.[/quote]
No it has nothing to do with our discussion it has to do with my discussion with Erik which you can read here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/92719#Post_92719
But by all means to feel free to join the discussion :)
I've never read the Will to Power but I did give it a brief look after you told me to look into it, and skipped through its contents here and there to gather what it's about. It's quite long.
Quoting Beebert
Hmmmm sure. Though Kierkegaard did live through the motions of the knight of faith in his life with Regine Olsen - did he not believe, absurdly, that he would marry her, even though he had rejected her earlier and she married another?
Yes, at least not in a Christian sense. He also said he aspires to be a Christian and greatly desires to be one, but avoided calling himself one.
Quoting Beebert
If you read Works of Love (which in my opinion is his best work - also one of the few that he wrote under his own name) you will understand that when one has Faith, one doesn't only have faith only with regards to temporal existence, but also with regards to eternity. Indeed, in time he has lost Regine, but he will regain her in eternity. That would be the position. Whether he had made this movement of faith, and really believed unto his dying moments, I do not know.
I will have to reply to the other messages tomorrow, as I'm now going to sleep.
Exactly. He was quite likely also a universalist ;)
Morality is used as condemnation, as self-righteous justification to oppress, and destroy, and is based in the emotions of disgust. Societies with high levels of infectious diseases, and lack of sanitation have the highest disgust sensitivity, and most draconian moral impositions.
Is what he's saying disgusting? Yes, of course it is. Life and the world is not pristine, and I see a lot more evil in attempting to render it so than in embracing being disgusting creatures ourselves. Monstrous creatures ourselves.
The point is not that we ought to be cruel, exploitative, rapacious -- it's that we already are, and the only thing that will truly transform that benevolent nature into something malevolent is when we decide that we are not, and it is you instead. The disgust, distaste for it... the value of life in quantity over quality, and the turning away from nature in favor of the ideal. This is where the truly evil lies. It isn't in life or nature, but in its opposition, that the true will to complete annihilation surfaces.
I'm less well read of Nietzsche, but from my limited knowledge of him, I'd say I agree. The early Nietzsche is the most interesting, in my opinion, because that's when he was most influenced by, complimentary of, and in agreement with Schopenhauer. The Nietzsche that simply reverses Schopenhauer's ethics and berates his mentor is rather insufferable.
Speaking of biographical anecdotes, here's something I dug up some time ago but never shared that you might find interesting, as I feel it's a propos some of our previous discussions (taken from The American Catholic Quarterly Review from 1916):
Henry Bayman, Nietzsche, God and Doomsday.
What is this 'beyond', anyway? I say that wisdom comprises seeing through the illusion of the world, the illusion that the world is real in its own right, that it contains its own ground or cause. Nietzsche was never able to penetrate that - he sees the meaninglessness of physical existence, but nothing beyond it.
This is a world without meaning, affirmation, or value. This is nihilism. The resentful denial of all that is superior, with the values of pity, and mediocrity being all that remain.
"What were the advantages of the Christian moral hypothesis?
1. It granted man an absolute value, as opposed to his smallness and
accidental occurrence in the flux of becoming and passing away.
2. It served the advocates of God insofar as it conceded to the world,
in spite of suffering and evil, the character of perfection-including
"freedom": evil appeared full of meaning.
3. It posited that man had a knowledge of absolute values and thus
adeguate knowledge precisely regarding what is most important.
4. It prevented man from despising himself as man, from taking sides
against life; from despairing of knowledge: it was a means of
preservation .
In sum: morality was the great antidote against practical and
theoretical nihilism. "
But that sort of sums up Nietzsche and postmodernism. We can have different truths that do not cohere because everything is all pretty much constructed anyway. We're not in touch with any kind of thing-n-itself behind the vale of appearances
On the whole I tend to find that I think Nietzsche doesn't really value brute power. Sometimes he seems to, but he's often extremely critical of powerful dumb people.
I've heard people assume that Nietzsche is much more concerned with something along the lines of intellectual power than of political power.
Whether or not I buy that is dependent upon my mood. Today I give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he would hate Trump.
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/05/believe-it-or-not
Read that article, he of course Believes Nietzsche was wrong in the end. But yet necessary, and correct in many of his diagnosis etc.
I believe Nietschze also believed that art has the power to transcend The Will. However, he depicted this rather grotesquely in the form of a master-slave relationship.
Maybe moralizing tout court is a mistake. Maybe there are inferiorities and superorities, and they have nothing to do with personal values, but innate and environmental deviations. One doesn't have to be mistaken in what others are doing wrong for them to be incapable of doing it right, or incapable of even understanding the criticism.
Nietzsche seemed to think this way. His advice against the inclination to pity and save, his notion of only writing for a select few, or even single individual, while in no way devaluing others for being more chafe than wheat. It seems a poor leader that is disgusted, or even finds pitiful those that they lead. This would be misanthropy, which Nietzsche found to be exceedingly tempting at times, but was all the more vehemently opposed to for that very reason.
The equality, and elevation of everyone to the highest of heights conceivable is a mighty high value, but for it to be possible, the responsibility must be placed with the individual as to why they have not accomplished this, or some other alterable vicissitude.
All senses I can conceive of in which the "higher man" is valued not relationally, but absolutely in comparison to the "lower" leads to both of their destruction. Leads to moralizing, or eugenics, or whatever. The world needs plumbers like it needs leaders, perhaps even the former more so, but they aren't as sexy, aren't as prestigious.
It isn't that we should all constantly be attempting to subvert tradition and convention, because it is unequivocally less valuable than originality, and creativity -- it's more that it's transcended, rather than subverted. Climbed like a ladder, rather than demolished with resentment and self-aggrandizement.
:s I doubt it. He does hope all will be saved, but that doesn't make him a universalist. You do have a tendency to brush off such distinctions :P
Quoting Beebert
But this is precisely the point. We have to question whether those really are the inner wants of man as such, or they're only the inner wants of SOME men.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, which is why Nietzsche is deeper than Hume and his ilk :P
Quoting Beebert
Yes, I am aware that Nietzsche diagnosed the modern condition very well. He is right that God is dead - or rather appears dead - to us moderns - because we have killed (rejected) Him. Max Picard (a Jew/Catholic) in his book The Flight From God does read all of man's history as an attempt to run away from God, while God is in active pursuit. The forgetfulness of God of today's Western world does represent, as Nietzsche would say, the condition of the Last Man. There is no doubt that Nietzsche was right, that without God, there is no morality.
Quoting Beebert
I've already read that article :P I'm quite a reader of the firstthings.com website lol This one is also really good:
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/02/a-philosopher-in-the-twilight
It's mostly about Heidegger, but there's stuff about Nietzsche as well.
Quoting Beebert
I would read it differently. Schopenhauer did not reject life as such, he rejected what Nietzsche would call will-to-power. Why? Because he perceived, just as Nietzsche perceived, that will-to-power leads to cruelty, indifference to the suffering of your fellow men, and violence. But unlike Nietzsche, he did not admire these things. So he perceived something that is beyond will-to-power - a different way of existing, which he never much described positively, but just negatively - as denial of the will-to-power. As he says at the end of the first volume of WWR, what remains after the annihilation of the will appears like nothing to those still full of will - but the inverse is also true - for those in which the will has completely denied itself, this very real world appears as nothing.
I think Schopenhauer is in many ways more far-seeing than Nietzsche.
Oh yeah, what seems to be the issue >:O
So you too share Nietzsche's admiration for "aristocratic" morality where joy is found in inflicting pain on others? You don't find anything wrong with that do you? Instead, the negro is the issue - typical leftist thinking.
"What the old bishop once said to me is not true–namely, that I spoke as if the others were going to hell. No, if I can be said to speak at all of going to hell then I say something like this: If the others are going to hell, then I am going along with them. But I do not believe that; on the contrary, I believe that we will all be saved and this awakens my deepest wonder."
Yes, I am aware of this, which is especially why I said he hoped all will be saved.
"But this is precisely the point. We have to question whether those really are the inner wants of man as such, or they're only the inner wants of SOME men."
All, but it expresses itself differently in each individual. Have you read the catholic Thomist-Aristotelian philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre? He rated Nietzsche as one of the absolutely greatest of all philosophers because of his deep and true realization that our morals are expressions of something else than we have traditionally admitted... BTW why not ask the same about original/ancestral sin? Has it really affected ALL and not just SOME?
Would you agree with Dostoevsky that the Only true sin is the failure to love?
Why does he wonder then? Wonder only makes sense if he doesn't understand how it will happen.
Quoting Beebert
Sure, but there's a reason why he ultimately sided with Aristotle in his After Virtue :P
Now, why would the will-to-power express itself differently in different people? I'm specifically now thinking about the moral v. the immoral, the cruel v. the kind, etc.
Wonder means amazement. He obviously believes all Will be saved, why does he otherwise say so?
Because we should pray and hope that all will be saved, we shouldn't wish anyone to be damned.
Quoting Beebert
What does "better" mean?
Quoting Beebert
Sure, but a vice is a failure to love. The person who is cruel, fails to love.
True, but Kierkegaard did not Believe anyone would be eternally damned, it is quite obvious. That doesnt mean he knew that to be the Case, but he believed it
But if the Only true sin is failure to love, then the Only true virtue is love and its fruits, correct? And as Nietzsche said: "All true acts of love are beyond Good and evil"
Yes, his belief that none will be eternally damned is his hope that all will be saved. He doesn't claim to know that all will be saved, which would be to adopt universalism. It's not a matter of doctrine for him in other words.
Nobody would disagree with this, it's just that the other virtues that are predicated by Thomistic-Aristotelian philosophy do stem from love anyway. They are the expressions of love.
Quoting Beebert
I wouldn't quite put it like that, but if by that you mean that acts of love are beyond "herd morality" then I would agree.
Also in scripture I find typical of the "multiple personality disorder-problems" or whatever one would call it. On the one hand this forgiveness and even God's weakness in Christ, on the other hand an all-powerful and ruling God, a vengeful and wrathful judge who condemns others to suffer and there by shows a total unwilligness to forgive in eternity and worse; to want suffering that is MEANINGLESS for the sufferers to exist forever. Suffering that doesnt build up, doesnt Change ways or anything. But just typical despair and physical and mental torture. Unendingly.
A great part of why my whole critique about christianity is resting on many of the words of Paul: Because what do we find in Christ? The son of God, God incarnate who become crucified, mocked, beaten, tortured etc. Now Jesus came to show the face of God, right(He who has seen me has seen the Father)? He came to free the oppressed and poor etc. And he did all this in weakness. He was weak, powerless, suffering, poor, an outcast etc. And he was the image of God. To me that suggests Only one thing: God is all These things. He is not powerful in the way that has been suggested in Christian theology. The Only way he has power is in his weakness, love, suffering etc. This IS God and Christ. But from Paul onwards, God is this all-powerful and ruling Other, that only takes the ROLE of being an outcast, a sufferer, a weak man who gets crucified, while in reality being a ruling King, a judge with absolute power. This I find untenable. God MUST be crucified every time an evil act is committed; and thereby proving his complete powerlessness and love. He can only conquer evil by being weak. He transforms hearts because he HAS no power, because he is like a lamb, and that is his power. Eternally. Because he has no other power to destroy it. That must be the truth, not the schizophrenic contradiction I find in classical theology. It is too influenced by ancient Greek and its worship of passionlessness and a God that can neither feel passion nor suffer. But I believe God the father to be filled with passion and that he suffers. He IS in need of man. Is this out of Place and wrong? In what way lf so?
There is a difference between something that is a doctrine and something that is a hope. Universalism is the doctrine that all will be saved. That doctrine is heretical.
Equally, I believe that Nietzsche's texts bear witness to the anger and frustration of a man who was a desperate seeker who was unable to find what he sought. What he sought was a concept of God that would transcend modern atheism and theism and prevent the advent of a catastrophic nihilism that he correctly predicted would devastate humanity in the two centuries following his announcement of the death of the Christian "Nicht Gott" of his time - a false god whom man had created and held hostage to teleological development progress in human history. A god who was merely a human idol.
Nietzsche was questing for the true living God, but he would never find that God because he would always be too arrogant, wilful, proud and vain to accept what Karl Barth termed the "humiliation" of the Christian Gospel. Barth was referring, in particular,to the Pauline doctrine of election by grace, which held that man could only begin to seek and know God ( who was the one absolute truth) through the freely bestowed divine gift of supernatural faith. The lesson that man not know God through any kind of human knowledge or thought process alone represented the utter humiliation of Enlightenment reason and here, Nietzsche was inherently unteachable.
Regards,
John
I find it curious that Nietzsche out of all people did not cure you of your weakness which perpetually demands salvation as if you or anyone deserved it in the first place... Why are you so worried about your salvation? Did you not hear that:
"Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it"?
A discussion with a Talmudic Jew cured me of this anthropocentric and I believe fake view of God. God is not out there to "please" you. When God showed Himself to Moses, Moses trembled in fear and fell on his knees, unable even to look towards God! Abraham approached Mt. Moriah after God had asked him to sacrifice his own son Isaac with fear and trembling. Job called for God and there was no answer as everything around him was collapsing. Jesus Himself shouted from the Cross "Father hast Thou forsaken Me?"
The Bible describes a God who is beyond good and evil, who is beyond logic and beyond understanding, whose ways are incomprehensible, who decides who He shall destroy and who He shall exalt. It also describes a God who is Love, who sends His Son to die for the sins of the world. A God who will drag ALL people unto Him. A God whose Love is so strong that NOTHING shall escape it. But God is Loving in his Strength. The God described by the Bible is a God for whom nothing is impossible - a God who can create a stone so heavy he cannot lift it, and then proceed to lift it too. Indeed, that is why God is worthy of worship and reverence - otherwise he'd just be a more powerful man. The God of the Bible is One, and yet Three. God changes his mind, and yet He is unchanging. God transcends all understanding, and in that lies His Greatness and Mystery.
It seems to me that you're seeking for a "god" who will fulfil your desires, who you can control, because He's so and so, because he's a good guy, etc. And then you complain hypocritically that Schopenhauer rejected life because of his pessimism, that he's just an inverted hedonist. Well what are you when you're trying to make God in something that you can put in your pocket, that you can bound by your understanding, if not just another hedonist looking to control God for your own satisfaction (read salvation)? Why aren't you on your knees worshipping, and instead are here to complain that you don't like God's behaviour like Job? What did God answer to Job? Who are you to question my creation?
Quoting Beebert
Yes, but He is also the God who comes in judgement, who will visit your iniquities unto future generations, who came to bring a sword and not peace, who allows even the righteous to be crushed (Job), who demands that those who follow him sacrifice even what they hold most dear (Abraham and Isaac), who is vengeful and jealous, who will cast all the unrighteous into a lake of fire, etc.
Quoting Beebert
This is precisely the scandal of the Cross. And it's not from Paul onwards. It's ever since the beginning, ever since Noah, ever since Moses. God in His infinity and His greatness is multi-faceted and impossible to comprehend for us. That's why the highest truth we know about God - the Trinity - is a logical contradiction.
Quoting Beebert
Because that's an anthropomorphic god (an idol) that you have created just because you're scared, He's not the Hidden God that has revealed Himself in the Old and New Testaments.
This view is repulsive to me. I dont think I deserve salvation, but I say that the opposite argument that "You deserve damnation because you are a wicked sinner" or "If you dont believe you will suffer in an everlasting fire" is wrong and wicked too, because God created man without man's consent. In a godless world, the hope of suicide and death at least exists if suffering becomes inendurable, but christianity eliminates this and demands a Faith I can not achieve. Therefore, it is christianity that causes one to lose Hope, to feel trapped in a person of existence that Will Only det worse if one doesnt make a leap of faith that I have tried to make. And this in combination with for example The fact that I havent asked for life is hideous to me. Deserve? It is not about what one deserves. It is about christianity saying "You are doomed to exist, and if you dont accept a 2000 year old event as being true and make a leap of faith, you Will be forever punished".
I agree. Only God knows and decides who deserves what.
Quoting Beebert
Not because of this. You don't seem to get it. God is SUPREME - He doesn't need to ask you for permission! How can you even conceive of the absurdity that God would need to ask you for permission to create you?!
Quoting Beebert
Oh, so you have read Nietzsche, but you can't affirm life with all its suffering?
Yes, it would be wrong to say that. Because it would fail to see that God is beyond good and evil, the Creator of both, who rules over both. It would amount to blasphemy as it would degrade God's greatness & transcendence.
I get that, but that doesnt mean I am capable of accepting his creation. In the Christian view, that is why I deserve hell
No, that wouldn't follow. I didn't say humans are beyond good and evil, I said God is beyond good and evil. We have been given commandments to follow by God, so we're not beyond good and evil. That is one of the differences between creature and Creator, which is emphasised in Orthodoxy.
But yes, God's Love is beyond good and evil, in that it is prior to both. That's why God is Love.
Something like: this world is holy; this world is divine; this world is worthy of awe and reverence; the (over)man as the highest creative force of this process is also divine. Anything which doesn't tend in this direction--be it Christianity, scientific rationalism, or whatever--must be annihilated.
So he wants to destroy only as a prerequisite for eventual (re)creation. Destroy all values, destroy all idols, and then see what happens? Likely mass chaos and destruction. Only then can a new world arise out of the ashes of the previous one. If this is the ultimate scenario he's aiming at, then he has to exaggerate certain things and push us over the edge into complete barbarism. Not that he advocates barbarism for its own sake, but this is what we need to experience before we can really see and appreciate what value those prior values really had. I recall him saying as much in certain places.
I just feel he's too thoughtful and sensitive a soul to sincerely advocate for some of the things he does. I'm not trying to make him out to be a democrat or "progressive" by today's standards, but I do feel that he clearly recognizes the trajectory of modernity, with its cheapening of human life, and the world more generally, and wants to see it crumble as quickly as possible, all the while recognizing that it could persist in its illusions, its hypocrisies, its subtle barbarity, and its overall absurdity in perpetuity under the dominance of the Last Men.
So, paradoxically, he wants a much more humane world than this current false and shallow one, and the only way to precipitate this eventual shift is to tear this one down at its foundations.
But this is just a hunch of mine. As I mentioned, he seems like such a great-souled man that it's hard for me to think he's genuine in his praise for some of the things he does praise.
I'll admit this is a largely unsupportable perspective going off his body of work. But, especially in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I feel there are intimations of a truly exceptional human being who loves "man" so much that he needs to destroy him in order to save him. Or some such.
I'm tired.
I dont know What I seek, But I definitely dont want to live under the terror I have experienced for over a year Now, and Nietzsche has just helped me a little bit, But far from completely. I never meant God is so and so, that is What I experience that christians have done that I have spoken to and that is not possible to accept for me. But if I can say God is so and so in any way, I can say that he is as revealed in Christ. And he is there crucified and the opposite of a rulling King as We normally understand the world. He rules in Christ by being humiliated and crucified and yet he resurrcts
Yes, but don't forget about the Second Coming of Christ. Christ will not be "humiliated" and crucified that time. It seems to me again that you're refusing to accept the fullness of God, and instead prefer a truncated kitsch of an idol.
You have misunderstood me. I object to Calvin and Aquinas precisely because of this fact. Calvin's sovereign God is stuck in Calvin's pocket
You are correct with regards to Calvin, but not so with regards to Aquinas. Aquinas did allow for truths that are beyond our understanding and that we take on faith. Furthermore, at the end of his life after his mystical vision, he abandoned the writing of his Summa, saying it is "like straw" compared to what he had seen. Thus, he would probably agree with you himself.
Quoting Beebert
Being in the image of God doesn't mean that we can comprehend God though.
Quoting Beebert
No, I don't think so.
Quoting Beebert
What about the serpent? The serpent was evil before the Fall.
Quoting Beebert
Because it's not based on Scripture or Apostolic Tradition - in addition it also makes little sense.
Quoting Beebert
I don't understand your obsession with the weak and humiliated Christ. Yes, Christ was weak and humiliated, yes Christ also turned the other cheek, but don't forget when Christ grabbed the whip and chased the money-lenders out of the temple. You keep giving a false portrait of Christ, as if that was His only side.
But we cant say "this is evil" if we dont know evil at all, right? And this must have been the Case for Adam before the fall... When God said that Adam will die if he eats the tree, he cant have understood what God meant. All he can have understood is that he had a choice, and that God didnt want him to make that choice because something unknown and terrifying would happen
Please explain to me how it doesnt make sense, that would be exceptionally important for me to understand since that doctrine seems like the Only logical conclusion to me and is the main reason I object to christianity... I can tell you why I believe in this doctrine as the Only conclusion to draw from Christian doctrines about God etc (för example, that God is completely uncontrolable and does what he wills also means that it is entirely possible that he wants a person to be destroyed, which my own inability to Believe seems to suggest to me... And also Scripture supports it: Romans 9 etc)
Also, in another thread, "Jesus or Buddha?", you claimed that there is neither election nor predestination, but these are two very biblical terms found at many places in the new testament... So how would you or your tradition explain these two concepts found in scripture?
What do we mean to "know" evil? Because there's two different senses here. One is to know that something is evil - which we can know even before the Fall - and two is to know the effects of evil, to know evil subjectively, which we don't.
Quoting Beebert
Why not? He could have known that breaking God's commandment is evil, but he couldn't know subjectively the effects this would have.
Quoting Beebert
Well we've already gone over those sections of Scripture though, and I've explained them. With regards to predestination and election, your question is borne out of fear, which is a problem. Why are you afraid? If you are unrighteous, you should want God to punish you. You should go to God and ask for punishment. Why are you afraid of His punishment? Look what Jesus says:
“Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me. Yet not My will, but Yours be done.”
This is like Nietzsche's eternal recurrence. Are you willing to accept not your will, but God's, even if it means your destruction?
Quoting Beebert
The Church by all means can be a controlling institution, but I think you can appreciate that holding a group of people together is difficult. Also ensuring that this group of people has the core of the faith correct is also difficult. I agree with you regarding the internal movements of the soul. Why do you think you need to trust in a priest? A priest can be helpful, but it depends on the priest. Not all priests are good at what they do.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, I agree. But even these "superficial" believers are closer to God than the apathetic atheists who don't even care. Like those in Nietzsche's fable as you pointed out. Those superficial believers are one of the reasons why I haven't yet joined the orthodox forum. Though there are some great people there that I've been following!
Quoting Beebert
Yes.
Please name some member on the orthodox forum that you find great to follow, because on that forum(though understandable in a way because I provoke them constantly, but I do it because their conformity to things that to me seems to be of no help provokes me) almost all are against me and find me a problem I believe.
Yes the apathetic atheists are a great problem, if I didn't think otherwise, I wouldn't be here discussing christianity with you. But I think that if christianity IS the truth, then the superficial believers are the greatest problem, because they give the outside world the completely wrong picture of what true christianity is.
"What do we mean to "know" evil? Because there's two different senses here. One is to know that something is evil - which we can know even before the Fall - and two is to know the effects of evil, to know evil subjectively, which we don't."
But before the fall, man didn't even know what was meant by death, since there was no death before the fall according to christianity.
"Why not? He could have known that breaking God's commandment is evil, but he couldn't know subjectively the effects this would have."
But the whole tree is called the tree of knowledge between good and evil. So as Berdyaev said, in the paradise state, man was beyond good and evil, because the distinction didn't exist within his soul. And when the commandment came, man felt anxiety, because within his soul, suddenly the realization of the possibility of change and thereby destruction came... And this is Kierkegaard's thought.
“Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me. Yet not My will, but Yours be done.”
This is like Nietzsche's eternal recurrence. Are you willing to accept not your will, but God's, even if it means your destruction?"
There is a difference between Nietzcshe's thought and eternal punishment. I wouldn't be afraid of baring consequences of my actions and choices, but Nietzsche at least believed in a certain power of the will, while christianity affirms an external will that imposes things on you from outside basically, or at least that is the vision of God that has been given to me... Also, if you have ever experienced an unimaginable since of despair, derived from imagining the worst possible kind of suffering that you can conceive of, you would understand why I fear a possible eternal destruction. I mean a destruction which leads to the destroyed feeling that he is constantly destroyed without ever being build up again. Someone who has lost ALL hope, and is controlled and incapable to be freed from despair(because come on, if God is a free and sovereign person, then he can decide to torture me how much he likes, and this thought can drive me insane), unimaginable physical and mental tortures that never end etc. This is not found in Nietzsche, because Nietzsche didn't believe in a constant eternal destruction, but in a combination of creation and destruction, that goes on eternally. I wouldn't only be destroyed in his view, but created and built up too. And I would also forget as time goes by and after every destruction and into all new creation, I will have forgotten the previous, or rather, the that the same has already happened... Life here is not the same as an eternal torture chamber... So repetition of this life time and time again is of course far preferable to eternal hell
I still wait for a concrete explanation though, despite my fear, not of passages from scripture, but of the orthodox understanding of election and predestination. If I can't effect or do anything to change God's will, then obviously he must be the one who elects and predestines no matter what I do. And he must also in a way make his elect certain and sure that they are elect by revealing himself in some way, no? So he did with Abraham, Samuel, Moses, Saint Paul etc... There is not a single example in scripture where man takes the first step and sort of MAKES God reveal himself to them through their own will
To follow? As in be their disciple? None. But some have very interesting things to say, though not on all topics. Anastasios, Iconodule, GiC, Fr. George, Jetavan, Papist to name a few. Not all listed here are Orthodox though.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, they are because you don't leave them alone. Again, not everyone is meant to be an intellectual, or to explore God's mysteries in depth. There's people and people. You have to understand and value everyone.
Quoting Beebert
I wouldn't say they're hypocrites, but they're just more superficial believers. There's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone was made for the life of thought, or for going into depths into God's mysteries. Most of them to tend to keep the commandments of God and try to live moral lives.
Quoting Beebert
Baptism and the Eucharist are symbolic of spiritual movements.
Quoting Beebert
Because otherwise most people wouldn't go over their sins and ask to be forgiven.
Quoting Beebert
The Church doesn't claim it's impossible to be saved while officially outside of it. In other words you can be spiritually inside the Church without being physically in it, or before being physically in it.
Quoting Beebert
They CAN be, for people like you.
Quoting Beebert
I'm sure he could understand what is meant by it, you don't need to experience a thing to know what it means afterall. But obviously he didn't know spiritually and subjectively what death meant.
Quoting Beebert
Or in your friend, William Blake's words, man was innocent, and thereby incapable of doing evil by himself - that's why an outside force, the serpent, was needed to encourage and pressure him to do evil.
Quoting Beebert
Well yes, but it is in the spirit of Nietzsche. For Nietzsche just meant to ask the hardest and most horrifying question and answer it affirmatively, thereby affirming life, whatever it may be.
Your anxiety presupposes your desire to have it your way - your will be done. If you had no concern for yourself, because all your concern was for God, then you would not be afraid. You would willingly go to hell if you had to!
Are you actually suggesting that poets aren't "deep" thinkers? :-|
Yes, now put down your poetry book! >:) (joking)
The problem I find is the idea that truth must be beautiful. If I say, "christianity is probably true", meaning that God probably became incarnated in Christ etc., christians seem to(though correct me if I am wrong) take that to mean automatically that it then is impossible or unreasonable to not have faith in Christ, or at least that it is impossible to call this truth ugly or life-hating etc. But that is a question of valuation, especially if God is beyond good and evil. What is beneficial? In God's view, beneficial is for example to eternally separate the sheep and the goats and let all people who do not live up to his high standards(the majority according to the gospels) suffer eternally in mental and physical agony in a lake of fire. This may be symbolic language of an inner reality, but it isn't really a pretty picture but a rather frightening one. So eternal peace and harmony for all is certainly out of question. So what is beneficial? Why is salvation in itself more beneficial than destruction? Is it because we want to avoid pain? But what if I say that I find the christian truth to be so horrible that I would prefer suffering and destruction to serving this truth? I still at least take a stand and make a decision against/for the truth, which is far better than being indifferent. Do you agree that there might be a possibility that a man rebels against God, or at least his conception of God since God is impossible to understand, for moral reasons? If not, let me explain these moral reasons for you: Christ gave men their freedom from the Mosaic Law when all they wanted was bread; that is, Christ’s gift of freedom was bestowed on a recipient ill suited to accept such a gift, because man is weak, vicious and rebellious. Man was before Christ guided in his every action according to the dictates of the Mosaic Law, which commandments are characterized by necessity and orderliness, but Christ’s work replaced the law with man’s freedom to choose between good and evil, having only Christ ideal as a model for his actions. Take for example the Grand Inquisitor from Dostoevsky's novel Brothers Karamazov: According to the Grand Inquisitor, the desire of all men’s hearts is not the exercising of their freedom to choose between good and evil according to their respective conscience, but to be ruled and ordered under a lawgiver, who’s sole purpose is to take such decision making out of their hands. The Grand Inquisitor strikes upon a very simple remedy for the absurd meaninglessness of human suffering, but only after he himself spent nearly a lifetime subduing his flesh and subsisting on roots in the desert in order to make himself “free and perfect” before God:
"All his life he loved humanity, and suddenly his eyes were opened, and he saw that it was no great moral blessedness to attain perfection and freedom, if at the same time one gains the conviction that millions of God’s creatures have been created as a mockery, that thy will never be capable of using their freedom… In his old age he reached the clear conviction that nothing but the advice of the great dread spirit [the devil] could build up any tolerable sort of life for the feeble, unruly “incomplete, empirical creatures created in jest.” And so, convinced of this, he sees that he must follow the council of the wise spirit, the dread spirit of death and destruction, and therefore accept lying and deception, and lead men consciously to death and destruction, and yet deceive them all the way so that they may not notice where they are being led, that the poor blind creatures may at least on the way think themselves happy. And note, the deception is carried out in the name of Him in Whose ideal the old man had so fervently believed all his life long"
Freedom is the most terrible burden God could have placed on humanity, since so few are capable of being consistent with so perfect an exemplar as Christ. The presence of God’s moral standard in the world is an burden that men can neither throw off nor endure, and so men alienate the freedom given them by Christ as a gift, an ill conceived gift, according to the Inquisitor, and he gladly takes the freedom from men and exchanges it for happiness. Under the dictatorship of the conscience, a corollary to the gift of freedom, man is unhappy and ever mindful of his continual failings when compared to the life lived by the theanthropus, Christ. Conversely, under the dictatorship of divine law, or even the rule of a civil authority, man’s life is content because his conscience is clear — the decision to do this-or-that, or not, is never his to make, and thus ultimate responsibility for the consequence of his actions is taken from him as well. In the Grand Inquisitor’s indictment of Christ, it is Christ's fulfilling of the Mosaic Law that has placed God beyond the reach of man’s ken, and beyond the goal of man’s merely mortal activities. The eternal standards of truth, good and evil, and the way to salvation, are all overturned by the advent of Christ, which example is set by God’s free choice. But most men are unable to grasp the full capacity of this change, and are forced to turn to other resources, and rely on other faculties that were not necessary in order to adhere to the Mosaic Law, such as reason, in order to discern between good and evil, and to determine by what means he might be saved; by God, or by human industry. Nihilism, according then according to me, has in many ways christianity as its source, because there is NO way to return to the values that were before Christ either. Nihilism is a result of man’s bewilderment before and omnipotent and willful God and not because God simply does not exist; my temptation to rely on myself and my own powers is due to the fact that I am forced to compensate in light of the fact that what God has determined as good cannot be relied upon to be good for man. Because in the light of the inevitable eternal suffering for the common man, who according to Dostoevsky's Inquisitor has been fooled by the catholic church in to thinking that he is on the right path when in reality he is following the devil. In this case an external authority that is in the end totalitarian instead of his own conscience, because man does not want to follow his own conscience and decide between good and evil, the distress that comes from despair and anxiety makes him more willing to die than to choose. So instead he decides to listen to authorities outside of him that claim to speak in the name of Christ. On this ground, if I have not the internal movements of the soul to accomplish faith in Christ, I refuse to believe that the external signs of the church, like baptism and the eucharist and confession to priests, will help me in any way.
Man has often chosen the path of war, of Caesar, of Satan... But this does not overcome God. Christ rejected with scorn to found a universal state and attain universal happiness now, but wanted it in his kingdom, and most men are unable to follow Christ's path. But yet Christ created them, and yet he rejected to turn stone into bread etc. Only a few men, out of the whole host of mankind, have the potential to come close to living up to Christ’s moral example, I ask; what need does mankind-at-large have for a God that has overestimated man’s capacity to manage the intellectual and bodily exertions that necessarily come with the exercise of freedom? The efforts of a few men (the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky's novel and a few others like him) to rescue humanity from self-destruction and to bring about universal happiness provides the foundation for totalitarianism; the incomprehensible God is replaced by the institution of a state religion, which is actually no religion at all, only an absolute civil authority armed at all points in the tinsel and trappings of religion. But... Where is God in all this? Where is he?
"At the same time I grasped that my instinct went into the opposite direction from Schopenhauer's: toward a justification of life, even at its most terrible, ambiguous, and mendacious; for this I had the formula Dionysian. Against the theory that an "in-itself of things" must necessarily be good, blessed, true, and one, Schopenhauer's interpretation of the "in-itself" as will was an essential step; but he did not understand how to deify this will: he remained entangled in the moral-Christian ideal. Schopenhauer was still so much subject to the dominion of Christian values that, as soon as the thing-in-itself was no longer "God" for him, he had to see it as bad, stupid, and absolutely reprehensible. He failed to grasp that there can be an infinite variety of ways of being different, even of being god."
I'm not well-versed in Nietzsche, but one thing I've retained from my reading of him is that Nietzsche thought the "ascetic" pessimism of Schopenhauer and his acolytes was detrimental to the flourishing of "great" people. Nietzsche did not reject pessimism but he tried to find a different way of approaching it in a way that ultimately affirmed life, because there are things in life that are beautiful, sublime, etc. At the core of his thought seems to be this notion of "health" - that no matter the circumstances the "healthy" person is able to flourish, and that the ascetics were really simply sick and diseased.
So Nietzsche was concerned that the influence of Schopenhauer's pessimism on the continent was negatively impacting the lives of people who would otherwise go on and do great things. This of course includes the production of music which Nietzsche criticized (like Wagner et al). It seems as though Nietzsche thought reading Schopenhauer dissolved potential in people. Nietzsche seemed to have wanted to instill a new sense of purpose and meaning in people so this wouldn't keep happening.
Nietzsche's philosophy was a product of the current cultural shift happening in the continent at the time. He's important, sure, but he is studied too much and given too much credit for ideas that weren't even his per se. It wasn't just Schopenhauer ---> Nietzsche, it was Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Frauenstadt, Duhring, von Hartmann, Mainlander, Bahnsen, etc etc.
It might be the case that Nietzsche is so wildly popular simply because ascetic pessimism is not altogether that satisfactory. Sooner or later people get bored and want more and it's refreshing to hear someone speak about active power and drama and achievement and heroism and all that.
No, if God was a totalitarian tyrant, I would not worship him. Never. You reason a bit like Calvin here
How can God be a totalitarian tyrant? Totalitarian tyranny implies unlawful and immoral use of power. But God is justified to use His power however He will. We as human beings are not, however.
The problem I find is the idea that truth must be beautiful. If I say, "christianity is probably true", meaning that God probably became incarnated in Christ etc., christians seem to(though correct me if I am wrong) take that to mean automatically that it then is impossible or unreasonable to not have faith in Christ, or at least that it is impossible to call this truth ugly or life-hating etc. But that is a question of valuation, especially if God is beyond good and evil. What is beneficial? In God's view, beneficial is for example to eternally separate the sheep and the goats and let all people who do not live up to his high standards(the majority according to the gospels) suffer eternally in mental and physical agony in a lake of fire. This may be symbolic language of an inner reality, but it isn't really a pretty picture but a rather frightening one. So eternal peace and harmony for all is certainly out of question. So what is beneficial? Why is salvation in itself more beneficial than destruction? Is it because we want to avoid pain? But what if I say that I find the christian truth to be so horrible that I would prefer suffering and destruction to serving this truth? I still at least take a stand and make a decision against/for the truth, which is far better than being indifferent. Do you agree that there might be a possibility that a man rebels against God, or at least his conception of God since God is impossible to understand, for moral reasons? If not, let me explain these moral reasons for you: Christ gave men their freedom from the Mosaic Law when all they wanted was bread; that is, Christ’s gift of freedom was bestowed on a recipient ill suited to accept such a gift, because man is weak, vicious and rebellious. Man was before Christ guided in his every action according to the dictates of the Mosaic Law, which commandments are characterized by necessity and orderliness, but Christ’s work replaced the law with man’s freedom to choose between good and evil, having only Christ ideal as a model for his actions. Take for example the Grand Inquisitor from Dostoevsky's novel Brothers Karamazov: According to the Grand Inquisitor, the desire of all men’s hearts is not the exercising of their freedom to choose between good and evil according to their respective conscience, but to be ruled and ordered under a lawgiver, who’s sole purpose is to take such decision making out of their hands. The Grand Inquisitor strikes upon a very simple remedy for the absurd meaninglessness of human suffering, but only after he himself spent nearly a lifetime subduing his flesh and subsisting on roots in the desert in order to make himself “free and perfect” before God:
"All his life he loved humanity, and suddenly his eyes were opened, and he saw that it was no great moral blessedness to attain perfection and freedom, if at the same time one gains the conviction that millions of God’s creatures have been created as a mockery, that thy will never be capable of using their freedom… In his old age he reached the clear conviction that nothing but the advice of the great dread spirit [the devil] could build up any tolerable sort of life for the feeble, unruly “incomplete, empirical creatures created in jest.” And so, convinced of this, he sees that he must follow the council of the wise spirit, the dread spirit of death and destruction, and therefore accept lying and deception, and lead men consciously to death and destruction, and yet deceive them all the way so that they may not notice where they are being led, that the poor blind creatures may at least on the way think themselves happy. And note, the deception is carried out in the name of Him in Whose ideal the old man had so fervently believed all his life long"
Freedom is the most terrible burden God could have placed on humanity, since so few are capable of being consistent with so perfect an exemplar as Christ. The presence of God’s moral standard in the world is an burden that men can neither throw off nor endure, and so men alienate the freedom given them by Christ as a gift, an ill conceived gift, according to the Inquisitor, and he gladly takes the freedom from men and exchanges it for happiness. Under the dictatorship of the conscience, a corollary to the gift of freedom, man is unhappy and ever mindful of his continual failings when compared to the life lived by the theanthropus, Christ. Conversely, under the dictatorship of divine law, or even the rule of a civil authority, man’s life is content because his conscience is clear — the decision to do this-or-that, or not, is never his to make, and thus ultimate responsibility for the consequence of his actions is taken from him as well. In the Grand Inquisitor’s indictment of Christ, it is Christ's fulfilling of the Mosaic Law that has placed God beyond the reach of man’s ken, and beyond the goal of man’s merely mortal activities. The eternal standards of truth, good and evil, and the way to salvation, are all overturned by the advent of Christ, which example is set by God’s free choice. But most men are unable to grasp the full capacity of this change, and are forced to turn to other resources, and rely on other faculties that were not necessary in order to adhere to the Mosaic Law, such as reason, in order to discern between good and evil, and to determine by what means he might be saved; by God, or by human industry. Nihilism, according then according to me, has in many ways christianity as its source, because there is NO way to return to the values that were before Christ either. Nihilism is a result of man’s bewilderment before and omnipotent and willful God and not because God simply does not exist; my temptation to rely on myself and my own powers is due to the fact that I am forced to compensate in light of the fact that what God has determined as good cannot be relied upon to be good for man. Because in the light of the inevitable eternal suffering for the common man, who according to Dostoevsky's Inquisitor has been fooled by the catholic church in to thinking that he is on the right path when in reality he is following the devil. In this case an external authority that is in the end totalitarian instead of his own conscience, because man does not want to follow his own conscience and decide between good and evil, the distress that comes from despair and anxiety makes him more willing to die than to choose. So instead he decides to listen to authorities outside of him that claim to speak in the name of Christ. On this ground, if I have not the internal movements of the soul to accomplish faith in Christ, I refuse to believe that the external signs of the church, like baptism and the eucharist and confession to priests, will help me in any way.
Man has often chosen the path of war, of Caesar, of Satan... But this does not overcome God. Christ rejected with scorn to found a universal state and attain universal happiness now, but wanted it in his kingdom, and most men are unable to follow Christ's path. But yet Christ created them, and yet he rejected to turn stone into bread etc. Only a few men, out of the whole host of mankind, have the potential to come close to living up to Christ’s moral example, I ask; what need does mankind-at-large have for a God that has overestimated man’s capacity to manage the intellectual and bodily exertions that necessarily come with the exercise of freedom? The efforts of a few men (the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky's novel and a few others like him) to rescue humanity from self-destruction and to bring about universal happiness provides the foundation for totalitarianism; the incomprehensible God is replaced by the institution of a state religion, which is actually no religion at all, only an absolute civil authority armed at all points in the tinsel and trappings of religion. But... Where is God in all this? Where is he?
Yes, and his rebellion would be no different than the rebellion of the very first rebel, Lucifer. The rebellion of someone who becomes so proud and thinks that he can judge God, and condemn Him as a totalitarian tyrant, just because he cannot hold God in his pocket - in other words just because he isn't God.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, that's why salvation is not achieved by works but rather by faith and grace. And the fact that the Cross is a scandal to the world isn't anything new. Christians knew this from the very beginning.
Quoting Beebert
Why do you presume that a newborn child doesn't believe first of all? I think that quite the contrary, children are born with a desire for God - they are like a clean mirror. But because of Adam's sin, dust sticks to the surface of the mirror very easily. But they are still very receptive to God compared to most adults, since they haven't accumulated so much dust. So yes, children can be baptised, just like adults can.
Quoting Beebert
I wouldn't think God would do that, why would you? You don't realise that God is the absolute centre of morality - God is the final moral standard, God is Himself the Law. There is no moral standard above and beyond God that you can use to judge God. It is impossible to judge God. That's why Kierkegaard speaks in Fear and Trembling of a religious sphere which is above the ethical - that's what the teleological suspension of the ethical is. It was RIGHT for Abraham to lift up the knife to sacrifice his own son when God requested it and by faith believe that God would return him Isaac.
Quoting Beebert
The rest of your Dostoyevsky essay can be addressed by this
The law of the Old Testament?
My expression means to show you that God is the source of morality. That is why Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky were right: if there is no God, then everything is permitted. Furthermore, because we have killed God, we have no right to hold onto our moral values either.
I agree and have no problem with understanding that. But I cant help my instincts repulses to so much of the God you present. Some clouded, mystic force and person that no one can grasp who is unimaginable in his frightening stature. And all that follows on it... So perhaps then I actually am used by God to suffer and be destroyed? Who knows, since I can't accomplish Faith? Is your suggestion then that I should just accept damnation and give up? Isnt that a way to nihilism? Then Why not keep being immoral? Why not kill myself? Because God doesnt want to? He just wants me to exist in this tormenting way of imagining a scary deity who threatens with hell and who I can not understand at all? Dont you see what this in combination with the idea that God wants Abraham to kill Isaac at first can do to a man?
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God's commandments.
Quoting Beebert
Why are you afraid though? You must go into this fear. Why are you really afraid of hell? Why are you really afraid of suffering? You are already suffering now. And you - not God - is making yourself suffer. So why - why are you doing it? You say you don't want to be in hell. But behold, you keep yourself in hell every second. Why?
Quoting Beebert
That's like asking me why not keep your hand in the fire? :s
Quoting Beebert
What's the use of that? What do you think you'll achieve with it?
Quoting Beebert
I do, but do you want to better understand God or do you want a comfortable superficial belief? You said you don't like the superficial believers. And yet it seems that you would rather be one of them.
according to John Chrysostom? That is what I am trying to cope with here
We don't know how much time we have left to live. You say you have 60 more years - how do you know? A car could run you over, you could get an incurable disease, and a million and one things could happen. The world and life is very fragile. Only God knows when we will die. The world may look peaceful at times, and nothing much is happening. Boring in other words. But things generally tend to change very fast when they do.
As for what to do in the meantime. Apart from following the commandments, living a moral life and having faith in God and Christ - God is awaiting, as Berdyaev says, a creative response from YOU. What will YOU do? It seems that you're really despairing at the fact that you have to choose - at the reality of your freedom. At the fact that you are given no role to play in the world, and yet, somehow you feel like you're expected to do something.
Maybe you won't do anything for 10-20 years. And then you'll do something significant for God and for the world. Who knows.
Quoting Beebert
I would pray that God forgive me and spare me of that fate, but if that's what He wants, then I will accept it, for Him. Afterall, He too died for me, why shouldn't I be willing to suffer for Him if I must? It is not up to a servant to question his Master in the end.
I said I MIGHT have 60 more years not that I will have it
Ahh okay, sorry I misread you because of the spelling error, my bad!
How much more should you be ready to go even to Hell when God orders you, his soldier, to do so?
If a commanding officer hasn't earned the respect of his soldiers, then those soldiers won't go into open fire because to do so isn't in their own best interest, nor is their best interest the priority of their commanding officer. If, however, the soldiers do respect their commanding officer, they will obey his orders to the letter, even if the order turns out to be miscalculated and a mistake. The issue is that a commanding officer earns respect through a verifiable track record of taking care of his soldiers and making the right call - think of Erwin Rommel as perhaps exemplifying this principle the most, at least in recent history. The dilemma with God being a general in your analogy is that his orders can never be wrong, they're never mistakes. If all you're after is trust between a soldier and commanding officer, you can get that with a Patton, Rommel, etc. You don't get that same sort of trust between a soldier and God, though, because God has no track record. He's never on the battlefield giving orders, nobody can sit down and tally a list of decisions made by him. A reality where an army has no commanding officer but God is one that won't ever make decisions because no orders are actually being given. That order to rush the trenches into open fire, or however you want to picture it, would never have come down to your or I in the thick of it. We'd be stuck there, left to make our own decisions, which would be a disaster.
I think Nietzsche means what he says, maybe it’s in a bit of embellished tone which drags the imaginations of some readers away from his point, but it seems an earnest point about morality.
People just don’t pay attention to what he is describing. They think he is arguing something absurd like sadism, torture and others being forced to do whatever you say, regardless of the moral status of actions, is somehow moral. Nietzsche is not interested in any such incoherence.
It’s the character of morality itself Nietzsche is trying to capture. What does it mean if some state or some person is immoral? How does it impact on their significance and our actions towards them? Nietzsche is describing the cruelty constitutive of morality, the pain and suffering inflicted on the inhabitants of the world to achieve moral virtue— the bodies in the ground, minds and bodies wasting away in a cell, the pain of belonging with someone who you despise, the pain of losing a partner because their distress at being stuck with someone they couldn’t stand was unbearable, distress of being forced to live in a world which violates their values, etc.-- it's the greatest thing that might ever be, for a moral world is achieved.
To be moral means to be cruel to someone. The very being of morality holds the immoral ought be destroyed, be restricted or forced to live in a world which defies their sensibilities— their acute emotional and/or physical distress is sought to create a world of moral virtue.
In his seemingly excessive comments about cruelty, Nietzsche is only making the honest pronouncement as a moral advocate. He is holding up a mirror to morality to show us what it means for us and the world— “Oh the Lord be praised, the unrepentant sinners burn is Hell as they deserve, never has there been so much moral virtue.”
The point is not that morality is untrue or even unjust, but that it is cruel, about asserting power over someone, holding them under your toe to form a world of moral virtue.
Even morality with the virtue of compassion partakes in such cruelty; the bully is shamed and denied power, a selfish hedonist is attacked for not showing compassion, many an individual and their interest is sacrificed for compassionate goals, all to achieve a moral world.
To be moral is to partake and reveal in a cruelty. In the passages on cruelty, the moral advocate is looking upon themselves, at what they celebrate and enact, to produce a world of moral virtue. Just it may be, but it is undeniably cruel to the immoral and that is morality’s intention.
Those who think morality is just defined by caring for others, by thinking about their concerns and helping them, are peddling a fraud. Ignorant of themselves, they have failed to consider how their morality impacts upon the world, of what it demands on certain people to achieve moral virtue.
Let us take Kierkegaard once: For Kierkegaard, one must go first from the aesthetic to the ethical then to the religious right? But if you have come to the ethical state where it is possible to take a leap of faith, but you for some reason decide to suspend your ethics and go back to the aesthetic life, then you have devolved. This is what I have done in nu lite. Kierkegaard doesn't really comment on this problem from what I remember. However, he seems to indicate that this situation would lead to despair because, having already been in the ethical, you are now conscious about your choices and about right and wrong, which is the opposite of the aesthetic, but yet you are aesthetic and have lost the "possibility". You are spiritually paralyzed. Right? So what can you do? Kierkegaard offers no solution to this but seems to say that you have lost your soul.
No, these are not a progression, but rather three different ways of being in the world. They are "moods" rather than paths. Kierkegaard's ultimate point is that the aesthetic mood is a forgetfulness of the ethical mood, and the ethical mood is a forgetfulness of the religious mood. In-so-far as this relationship holds true, this means that the religious mood does not deny the ethical and the aesthetical, but rather subsumes and incorporates them in itself. Aufheben.
Quoting Beebert
What have you done to be more precise?
Quoting Beebert
Try to be open to the ethical and religious spheres of life - look at your own face, maybe for the first time, without being afraid. Remembrance - anamnesis as Plato says.
Neither do you know the general's intentions in the army. For all you know, he could have sold all of you to the enemy, so he is ordering you to simply rush to your death. But you have to make a choice. That's where faith and trust come into play - relying not on your own understanding.
Yes He does. God has the greatest track record anyone could ever ask for. One is willing to suffer for God, because God suffered for us in Jesus Christ!
Quoting Buxtebuddha
I think it is modern society's forgetfulness of God - or Flight from God as Max Picard would say - that stops us from hearing the voice of our Shepherd.
You don't know that.
Quoting Agustino
wut
Exactly my point.
That is not a fact (it would be if you stopped at not hearing the voice) it's an interpretation. But could it be that you do not hear because you have forgotten God?
Sure, but there is always the underlying experience of hearing.
I agree that morality is cruel in the sense that you speak about it here. However, Nietzsche obviously can't be speaking about the cruelty of morality when he speaks about going out there to pillage, rape, murder, etc. can he?
I'm saying that a voice could be anything.
Quoting Agustino
This suggests that God was real and no longer is, which isn't my position. I don't believe in God, which means at the barest minimum he never was and never is.
Yes, that is because you do not understand God - God for you could be anything.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Yes of course, because you are born after the loss of faith. You are born in a faithless world. So why would you expect to hear God? From your perspective, it looks like there never was a God. That is precisely why it is a forgetfulness. It is almost impossible to even think God today.
I don't venture to define God as being this and not that. Attempting to define God is a theist's first mistake.
Quoting Agustino
What? I was a believing Christian for the majority of my life, so I don't know what you're trying to suggest here.
Quoting Agustino
Well, yes, this is the point. I don't expect a heavenly vision any more than I expect to hear from the dead 'neath the earth.
Quoting Agustino
Forgetfulness of what?
I don't believe in any God, which means that God doesn't exist as I go about my business. It wouldn't make any sense for me to somehow be forgetful of that which never existed in the first place, like if I lamented the fact that I forgot a memory I never had.
Also, I understand Nietzsche's "God is dead" to mean his assertion that God doesn't rule society anymore, which I think is true. I don't think "God is dead" is an "argument" for God not being real.
Oh, have you been reading Pseudo-Dionysus? That's good to hear!
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Sure, but even if you personally were a Christian, you lived in a non-Christian world.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Your expectations are governed by the modern zeitgeist in which you find yourself. An age governed by spiritual darkness isn't going to be an age where God appears very clearly at all, even to most "believers". Especially while they make their abode on college campuses :P
Quoting Buxtebuddha
God.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
It's deeper than that, it's that God doesn't rule people's lives anymore, God is no longer a discernible presence as He once was. Nietzsche's madman came amidst people who still "believed" - and he proclaimed that God is dead, and they understood him not. Their problem was that they weren't even aware that God is dead - that God is not communicating with them. That's how alienated they were from the experience of God, even though they still claimed to believe and went to Church as they were used to. The truth was that they didn't know God, that's why they didn't even know He was dead. For them, God was an empty symbol, an idol. It was just going to be a little bit more time until they finally dropped the empty symbol as well, and stopped pretending, showing their true face.
Today if we shall go in the multitudes and mention God, we shall not be heard. They will ignore us. They will look at us as if we're crazy, as if we don't even know what we're talking about. They will not understand the meaning of the word "God". It will be as meaningless as sadakdhald.
When I say you have forgotten God, I don't mean just you - I mean our entire age. You yourself are a member of this age, and therefore inherit its problems. You cannot accept the rules of today's world - be a member of it - and believe in God at the same time. For one cannot serve both God and Mammon, one cannot have the mark of the beast on their forehead and yet serve the Lord. The way society is built, it's almost predicated on a rejection of God. To live in modern society, even amongst most believers, means to reject the mystery of God (most of the time). That is why people like Max Picard chose to retreat like hermits on a mountain. Where else could they live in communion with God?!
I feel that the time is not right yet. All we can do is wait. But one day the clock will strike 12 and the world will awaken anew. We alone cannot save the world. A human being cannot be the light of an age, regardless of how great they personally are. The time needs to be right.
In this light we can also understand Nietzsche IMO, who actually tried to find the living God beyond language and concepts. That is Why he blamed Paul, for starting to theologize and make theories and define things. That is part of the revaluation of all values, to do away with concepts that doesnt build up anymore
I will tell you later!
This sums up God pretty well, lol.
Not lately, 8-)
Quoting Agustino
In a macro sense, sure. Not in a micro sense.
Quoting Agustino
I've not seen God in either good times or bad, so I'm not convinced of this viewpoint.
Quoting Agustino
You have to distinguish between whatever God is in himself and the idea of God. I would agree that the idea of God seems to have withered away in the West, but you'd be a crackpot to say that God himself isn't still "ruling" people's lives.
Quoting Agustino
uhhhhhhhhhhermhhhhhhhh.......
Quoting Agustino
Even those who claim to understand God don't really understand God, hence all the mystery.
Quoting Agustino
You'd have to argue that previous "ages" were more in line with God, which would be nigh-impossible to do without donning rose-colored glasses.
Quoting Agustino
Explain this, lol.
Quoting Agustino
We all have the mark of being a sinner on our foreheads. And there is quite a bit in modern society that we all go along with even though it's probably best not to in a perfect world.
Quoting Agustino
You really are sounding like a crackpot now...
They act as idols, not because we are not conscious of them, but rather because we aren't conscious of them as what they are in their essence. And in their essence they are that which arrests our gaze, and prevents it from reaching beyond them [onto God].
Quoting Beebert
I think you are quite close. We live in an age dominated by idolatry, and this is what makes idolatry special. Those who are engaged in it, are not aware of what they are doing - the idol blinds and masks the Truth. It conceals it. The death of God is really the concealment of God behind our modern idols, including capitalism, science, and technology - all three which are inseparable. To see God, one must destroy the idols.
Quoting Beebert
Quoting from here:
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Beebert
Yes, I agree Nietzsche did not attack the real God.
Quoting Beebert
I think that quite the contrary, St. Paul's faith was absolutely based in his direct experience of God, and not in theories. Actually, St. Paul warned against them:
Yes, the macro-sense is what I'm talking about. You don't live in the micro world of your family, relatives, neighbours, etc. Thanks to technology the macro world impinges on your wherever you are.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
The idea of God emerges from the experience of God. The fact that the idea of God has withered away is a sign that something has blocked the experience of God, which until now was present - or more present than today.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Quoting Buxtebuddha
It's not nigh-impossible. All one has to do is behold their cultures and compare them to our own materialistic one.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Certain things are required of you to "have a career", "be accepted in society" (have a family), have friends, etc. The world is so structured to push Godly men to the periphery. That isn't so in all ages, but it is so in ours.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Good, how much will you charge to accept me as a patient? :P
Well do say, because it is hard otherwise for me to know what you're struggling with. Not all sins are alike.
Regarding Paul, I agree he didnt theorize in that sense; but he did create a theological understanding of how the atonement Works, how salvation comes about by God "paying " for man's sins and guilt etc. Which is a way of UNDERSTANDING the cross that cant really have been understood in exactly that way and been as clearly defined by the other apostles before Paul came about. And if we take a look at the great theologians of especially the west, we find a theology that is extremely based on Paul, so to tv degree that it has sometimes even seemed to be something that stands in opposition to the teachings and life of Christ.
"I count Schopenhauer as a religious philosopher, whose philosophy does descend into mysticism it by the other apostles before"
Interesting, that is how I see Nietzsche. I can't agree with Schopenhauer that christianity is a denial of the Will to live. Rather it is an affirmation of the Will to live. Sure Christ was crucified... But he was also resurrected.
Questionable. Surely one can consider the idea of God, consider belief in him, without having to acknowledge any supposed experiences of him. Like right now, I'm discussing ideas about God, but I wouldn't claim to have experienced God.
Quoting Agustino
You act like this is as easy as deciding which box of cereal you should buy. It's not.
Quoting Agustino
I can have a career without being a slave to society.
Quoting Agustino
I'll turn you away at the door. I only accept Jeebus.
I don't think Marx was wrong, except for the fact that he thought Communism would be a utopia, while I think quite the contrary. He was also wrong about the way communism would be brought about - he did not foresee corporatism, and the role it would play in leading to communism.
Quoting Beebert
It depends how you read Paul. His letters were meant as guidance to newly formed Christian communities, which had just converted and were struggling to keep the faith alive. If you read them in that light, then all this changes.
Quoting Beebert
But Schopenhauer had a different concept of the Will than Nietzsche. For Schopenhauer the Will was effectively evil and cruel - it was the worm from man's heart. In that Schopenhauer was prescient for he understood that if man gives in to his impulses and selfishness, then he will wreak havoc around him. And I think Schopenhauer was right - the Will is what is left when God is gone, and the Will is the opposite of compassion and self-restraint - it is pure ego - it's Dostoyevsky's "everything is permitted". So by the denial of the will Schopenhauer didn't mean a denial of "life" exactly. Rather he meant a denial of our corrupt nature, in order to affirm the noumenon, which in his later writings he separated from the Will, and left as an unknown, which is what remains, or what shows itself, after the Will has been denied. But this noumenon which is affirmed through the denial of the will remains unreachable for those of us who are still full of will.
Nietzsche re-interpreted the Will as something positive, to be affirmed - but just because the Will was all that was left when God (the noumenon) was gone. This is in fact why I find Schopenhauer deeper than Nietzsche in that he saw something of the transcendent, whereas Nietzsche was desperate to see some of it, but it seems to have eluded him. The will-to-power in my vision is inadequate at explaining anything that is transcendent. It can explain the behaviour of most people in todays society, I can grant that. But it cannot explain the behaviour of the holy, except in the sense that the holy are the strong - they are holy out of strength, not out of weakness (but I don't think Schopenhauer would disagree here).
I also think you are misreading Schopenhauer. Christ was resurrected, but that wasn't an affirmation of the Will to Live in the sense that Schopenhauer understood it. Quite the contrary, Christ did not accept life at all costs, but rather chose to die out of his Love and Compassion. So he denied the will to life - that will which would do anything to stay alive, even the highest immoralities. It was an affirmation of the noumenon and a denial of the will to live.
You can consider the idea of God, but for that idea to arise in society and gain prevalence in the first place (so that you get to discuss it today), the experience of God needs to be presupposed.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
If we look at the moral codes and cultures of different ancient societies we will see something that is starkly different from our modern, consumer based mass society.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
It's not about being a slave. Yes, you can have a career, so long as you give up belief in God. And don't take this the wrong way - belief means action, you cannot believe only in name, for that is not real belief.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
>:O Is poor hospitality common in the US? :P
No, I don't think so. There only needs to be belief, not experience.
Quoting Agustino
I'll say it again - you act like this is as easy as deciding which box of cereal you should buy. It's not.
Quoting Agustino
What the fuck? >:O >:O >:O
Quoting Agustino
Americans usually don't let crazy people into their home. We notify the police.
How can there be belief if there is no experience?
Quoting Buxtebuddha
I really don't understand what you mean here. The difference is quite easy to see for me at least, why do you find it difficult?
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Wait wait wait, I thought I was coming as a patient to your office, not your home >:O
Mithras is real because ancient Romans believed in him because they had experiences of him........sure, lol.
Quoting Agustino
Because analyzing history is not simple. You can't just pick up some books and have a full knowledge of all the complexities of historical societies.
Quoting Agustino
The rest clarifies nothing. Clearly someone in modern society can have a career and still believe in God. Like, what the fuck? Again, you're mad, bro.
Yes, actually Mithras does represent an experience of the transcendent that was revealed to the Romans. My entire point is that such theophanies weren't uncommon in the past, but they are uncommon now - almost entirely absent.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Depends what you understand by having a career. But the point I'm making is that to - say - work for Facebook - the community there will force one to give up on some of his/her beliefs, especially if they want to be appreciated, promoted, etc.
.............
Quoting Agustino
You have a career in programming, therefore, you do not, and cannot, believe in God.
Why the dots? It's true, how else do you think they came to believe in Mithras?! :s
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Nope, I didn't say that.
I think he does-- the nature of morality is such that it advocates things violence, rape and killing. Morality is a justification for such actions. By Christian doctrine, billions are sent to burn for all eternity and it is [I]moral greatness[/I]
God gets to be amongst the cruelest beings there will ever be and it is good. Throwing someone into the violence, rape and torture of Hell is moral virtue for God. All that cruelty, it is the greatest achievement of God. What Nietzsche advocates is nothing less than what God commands and celebrates for vast numbers of people.
:s No, I'm quite sure hell doesn't include rape, killing of innocents, etc.
But the kind of cruelty that morality is and that you described in your previous post can be positive.
The point wasn't about innocents. It was about those God sends to the torture of Hell: the guilty. Nietzsche is entirely right. If you're guilty, then violence, rape and death are fine. Such cruelty cannot be intrinsic immoral (or moral). It takes a morality to define actions or states as such, and it demands cruelty to the immoral.
No doubt it's a positive... that's the point: moral greatness is found in the cruelty to and possession of the immoral. Given this, how do you disagree with anything Nietzsche states in the quotes you seemingly found so offensive?
They experience the idea of Mithras, the idea that there is a deity of war watching over them in battle, that praying to him before battle will ensure victory. This experience of Mithras as an idea does not mean that Mithras is real and that he is, therefore, directly experiential. In other words, Roman soldiers would have believed in what Mithras represented, not in he himself, because no one had ever directly experienced him.
Quoting Agustino
Unless you claim to not be in a career, yes, yes you did....
Well, no, I don't think rape, etc. are okay towards the guilty. This doesn't seem to be what Nietzsche is saying at all either.
This is just a non-sequitur for example, confusing an is with an ought.
And here, behold! It is the aristocracy, the noble races, those who came before Christianity, that murder, arson, rape and torture! It is the masters, not the slaves. So it is not the Christian morality that Nietzsche is speaking about, but quite the contrary, the pre-Christian morality, which he actually praises!
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Yes, but not in the sense of raping them, and so forth. It demands cruelty in that the immoral are told that they must change their ways, repent. In a certain sense this is a cruelty. One is even being cruel to themselves when they demand that they change. But this is absolutely not the same as the cruelty of violence, being raped, etc.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
No, this would be wrong. Moral greatness - even according to Nietzsche actually - comes from strength, and is not a reaction to the weakness of others. It is a self-affirmation of one's own greatness, it is not being cruel and possessing the immoral.
And how does the idea of Mithras arise? :s And by the way, the ancients relate to gods in a different way than you imagine. They prayed and offered sacrifices, etc. in the hope the deity would aid them in battle, but they were also aware of the possibility that they couldn't control the transcendent, and it was much the other way, the transcendent controlled them - so the possibility that the gods would lead them to defeat was also real, and accepted as such.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
They couldn't believe in what he represented without experiencing the world as such. It's that underlying experience that made them believe.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
What does being real mean? Being real doesn't have only one understanding. Clearly the transcendent is not real in the same sense an immanent object is - for one the transcendent cannot be object. Numbers are also real in a different sense than chairs are, etc.
Are you familiar with Martin Buber? "In his Two Types of Faith", He distinguishes between the messianism of Jesus and the messianism of Paul and John. While he had great respect for Jesus as a man, Buber did not believe that Jesus took himself to be divine. Jesus’ form of faith corresponds to emunah, faith in God’s continual presence in the life of each person. In contrast, the faith of Paul and John, which Buber labels pistis, is that God exists in Jesus only, and that salvation turns into believing in the work of Jesus. They have according to Buber a dualistic notion of faith and action, and exemplify the apocalyptic belief in irredeemable original sin and the impossibility of fulfilling God’s law. Buber accuses Paul and John of transforming myth, which is historically and biographically situated, into gnosis, and replacing faith as trust and openness to encounter with faith in an image. How would you respond to this?
Does Mithras exist or is he a figment of Roman soldiers' imaginations?
Of course, he's Jewish! >:O
Quoting Beebert
I think the two are not opposed, but supplementary to each other.
Quoting Beebert
Somewhat, but not "very familiar". I have his work "I and Thou" and it's another one of those that I started but not finished yet.
Quoting Beebert
I would say that Buber is wrong in his interpretation of Christ. Christ did have a salvific role, in that Christ came to deify human nature (where forgiveness of sins is only a part of that). To treat Christ merely as a man with a close relationship with God as opposed to Saviour would be blasphemy from a Christian point of view. Unless Christ died and rose from the dead, as Paul said, there is no Christianity and our faith is in vain.
Quoting Beebert
I disagree that we always perceive God's presence in our lives. We see darkly.
Mithras is a name. Does it matter whether you call it Mithras or Cthulhu?
"It?" Does the being signified by the name Mithras exist?
You answer your own question here.
Quoting Agustino
Uh, explain to me what this underlying experience was, please. But I have a feeling you won't actually tell me about Mithras in and of himself, you'll tell me secondary factoids and attributions.
Quoting Agustino
Perceptible, experiential, verifiable, and fundamentally private. This keyboard I'm typing on is real, being a part of and existing within reality, because it is perceptible, tangible, and so on (I can touch it, type on it, bash my head into it if I wanted to), I can experience its tangibility, which also means, therefore, that the keyboard is verifiable through both its tangibility and experiential quality. It is additionally not contingent upon any outside agent's confirmation. Me and the keyboard is all that is needed.
So, let's consider just Mithras, since he's the current example. Is Mithras in and of himself perceptible, i.e., can he be smelled, touched, etc.? No. Is Mithras in and of himself experiential if he's not perceptible? No. Is Mithras in and of himself verifiable, then? Obviously not, as we have no other means with which to confirm interaction with ourselves by outside agents. Is Mithras in and of himself a perceptible experience that is verified through one's own privacy? Again, clearly not, seeing as Mithras is not perceptible or experiential.
Okay, so Mithras in and of himself is a dud. But what about the idea of Mithras - all that which is attributed to be him, of him, and from him? Surely this is more the case, given the frescos, statues, and so on dedicated to him, the god of War. Merely because there were ideas of a war god named Mithras, said to do this, that, and other things, doesn't mean Mithras is real. And if he's real in a supernatural sense, then there's nothing to be said of it. To name a supernatural entity, give it qualities, a personality - that's all silliness to me.
I'll add that my perspective on realness is influenced by William James' system on thinking about mysticism.
Yes, the spiritual reality signified by Mithras' name does exist.
Sure, the number 2 also exists, and yet you cannot touch it or see it. (Nor can you "verify" it for that matter). Not all beings exist in the same manner.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Spiritual experiences are subjective and therefore not objectively verifiable to begin with. There may be intersubjective verification though it cannot achieve the degree of objectivity that is possible when dealing with objects. Obviously if you adopt your new form of scientism, you'll now reject anything which is not an object (and thus not "verifiable") as nonexistant - basically objectifying the entire world.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Again, where does this idea come from? If you tell me they had an idea of Mithras - where the hell did they get it from? :s
Quoting Buxtebuddha
No, I don't think I've answered it at all. Clearly there was an underlying experience of trying to relate with a transcendent being/force which was capable of influencing the outcome of their affairs, otherwise they wouldn't think of doing it in the first place, nor would they invest resources to do it - they were quite pragmatic.
Okay.
Quoting Agustino
Then you mean "no." :-|
So why is your God real but Mithras not? If you answer that you have in some way experienced God, then what distinguishes your experience from the Roman soldiers' experience of Mithras, such that your experience is true and theirs false?
Quoting Thorongil
Why do I mean no? :s I actually said yes and told you that the spiritual reality signified by Mithras' name - hence the being represented by Mithras - does exist.
How old are you if I may ask? Have you studied philosophy at University?
Ah well, that explains why you read a "not" there :P
Quoting Thorongil
Well I find it strange that you expected me to answer "no", when I've been saying all along that the Romans had an experience of a spiritual reality that they identified by the name of Mithras. I wouldn't be saying they had an experience of nothing would I? The reality of the transcendent doesn't only include God, it would obviously include other spiritual forces - angels, demons, etc.
Mid 20s.
Quoting Beebert
No, I'm a civil engineer by degree. I've worked in it briefly, but I'm working in IT/marketing at the moment. So I'm not a professional philosopher - although I have been studying philosophy for a long time, since I was 14-15 probably, or even earlier if you count certain mystics as philosophy.
I see. I should've known. This little trick was used by the Church Fathers. It's rather irritating in its unfalsifiability, but I guess I must grant it.
>:O
It's not a little trick at all, but in an age dominated by scientism and the objectification of reality people often have a tendency to admit only one spiritual reality - typically God - because admitting more than one is "too far" out there. But admitting only one spiritual reality is obviously false - a move predicated by one's subjugation to this age rather than anything else.
Probably my first "foray" into philosophy was Osho at 12 (just because my father at that time was very into the Osho movement). You Mr. Beebs will 100% like Osho given your current positions. If you watch a few of his videos or read his books, you'll forget Nietzsche >:O . I would disagree with him on most things (largely) ever since I became a Christian, but there would still be points of agreement - as there are with Nietzsche for example.
You couldn't verify whether the number 2 exists in and of itself because, as you say, there is no coherent conception of numbers in material. However, the number 2 does exist as an idea. That it represents this and that. It's definition, in other words, makes it real, in that one can interact with it in one's mind, but not real in the way one interacts with a keyboard.
Quoting Agustino
Where does anything that isn't true come from? I can't believe you're asking this question, lol.
Quoting Agustino
Where did the idea of a "transcendent being/force" come from, eh? At some point your argument requires a pure understanding of a thing in itself, which isn't possible. You end up with infinite regression of things coming from other things which came from another thing which...
Quoting Agustino
And flying spaghetti monsters, and unicorns, and.........
Number 2 isn't just an idea. An idea is always an idea OF something (an idea of a circle, an idea of a man, an idea of God, etc.). Number 2 is a being, an entity, which is of a different kind than material entities in this world are.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
What do you mean that "something isn't true"? Again, you're asking these questions, but you don't take into consideration how truth applies to different types of beings - you presuppose it applies in the same manner.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Our human experience.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Only if we limit ourselves to the "scientific" world.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Irrelevant. Those don't claim to be transcendent as Mithras, the gods, and other spiritual realities claim to be. Instead they are empirical matters, which are indeed a matter of verification.
On this point we can take entities like circles too. Perfect circles don't actually exist in material reality, and yet we have knowledge of them and their properties. The field of Being is much larger than just what can be scientifically or empirically investigated, and we don't always derive things from the empirical towards the conceptual, spiritual, or otherwise non-empirical, it can also be the other way around, as in the case of circles. We derive our equations from perfect circles which we conceive apart from empirical reality, and then we apply them back to real objects (imperfect circles).
"You Mr. Beebs will 100% like Osho given your current positions."
No I highly doubt it.
Sure, he would even admit to that probably :P But look at his ideas. You'd agree with them. You'd agree with him that society kills the individual, destroys creativity, and enforces conformity. You'd agree that man is free, and must express his freedom. You'd agree on the cruelty of hell and eternal punishment. You'd agree on the cruelty of moralists (such as the 14 year old girl example I gave you). And so forth. His favorite book was afterall "Thus Spake Zarathustra" (here's his reading of it) and his second favorite was Brothers Karamazov.
For me, since I got introduced to philosophy (and religion in a way) by Osho, I found him and reading his writings to give one a broad overview of all of spirituality and philosophy and also to instil a sense of looking for authenticity and personal experience - all of which I found very useful when reading philosophy afterwards and studying religions, and even becoming a Christian. Of course I think that Osho can also lead one astray - in fact is likely to lead one astray - but there are good elements there too.
Rajneesh is more akin to Gurdjieff than to Steiner. He avows a deep admiration for the former, I'm nof aware of him ever referring to the latter. But then I have not read all of his transcribed lectures.
Indeed. Nietzsche is commenting on the structure of morality. The point is not that rape (or anything else) is moral, but that morality always specifies and defines its unique cruelty. If it were true (so in the case of God, if God commanded it) the immoral ought be raped, then such cruelty would be moral virtue. And so on and so on, for any moral virtue and the cruelty which constitutes it.
Nietzsche point is Christianity is telling a falsehood. With respect to the presence and seeking of cruelty, Christian morality is no different to pre-Christian morality. It just specifies different cruelties. God is its aristocracy. Instead of suffering the whatever whim the aristocrat of man might decide, we suffer the whim of God.
Often this is better morally, no longer is morality merely spoken in terms of a human’s (the aristocrat) authority and whim, such that we must any action he takes, including those done for greed at the expense of others. It reorders morality to remove certain cruelties. Still, being morality, it puts it’s own in, the extent and nature of which depend on the particular account of God you are talking about.
My point about the rape and torture of Hell was to show God’s morality has the same logical relationship as the human aristocrat. If such rape and torture were moral, if God commanded it, they would be a moral virtue-- just as the command of the pre-Christian aristocrat. The Christian is confusing how their morality is different from the past. Rather than eschewing domination and cruelty, Christian morality only specifies different cruelties. (in this respect, post-Christian morality is no different either. Secular liberalism, for example, has its own cruelties it inflicts to achieve what it understands as moral virtue).
Nietzsche is pointing that exact fallacy. The mere presence of world doesn’t define a moral relationship. One needs an account of morality, which specifies which acts of violence, exploitation, rape and destruction are unjust and just. Without such an account, there is just life doing whatever it does. Nothing can be "intrinsically" unjust, that is, unjust merely by existing. Morality needs to do that work.
For sure, but only because that is the limit of God's command in this case. If God were to command the cruelty of a rape at some point, it would be just. All instances of morality are cruel in this sense, in their unflinching demand for domination and/or destruction of immorality. While it's different in the normative sense, it's the same in the descriptive sense that Nietzsche is interested in.
Yes and no.
In the sense Nietzsche holds morality is from strength, for sure. This isn't a rejection of either cruelty or domination though, just an argument people should be aware and honest about what they are doing. For example, sinners are not damned because of their weak of lack of repentance, but rather because of the self-affirmaiton of God an the Christian-- "Only those with the strength of repentance are saved."
You're right Nietzsche is against being cruel and domination, for the sake of domination (e.g. you must because you exist, and terrible, and belong to me), but that doesn't mean morality (even his own) is free of cruelty and domination. When cruelty and domination are a result of strength and self-affiirmation, they belong to the moral (which is why he praises aristocrats; they are honest about morality as a self-affirmation. Even if they are normatively abhorrent, they understand morality is defined in the affirmation of a particular will to power-- in being good and seeking it over the immoral, rather than by worthlessness and failing).
It would be strange to find a prominent historical figure that Osho doesn't refer to. He speaks, at times quite extensively, about Steiner, though not quite so admiringly. Even his admiration for Gurdjieff is limited, much like his admiration for Buddha, Christ, etc. The only figure that he seems to have only admiration and adoration for seems to be the Zen Patriarch Bodhidharma.
Here's what he had to say on Steiner.
Listen to this. It's exactly what you're saying too ^^ (especially with regards to life-affirmation).
Quoting Beebert
Not really, very little. Steiner has a lot of writings, I've only had a look at Philosophy of Freedom.
Quoting Beebert
Well I obviously think they're incomplete (and very likely to lead one astray), but they are on Nietzsche's level.
"but they are on Nietzsche's level."
?!?!?!
What's the question?
For example, at least Osho, takes on a lot of Nietzsche's ideas, including critique of traditional religion, condemnation of hypocrisy, ideas on morality, etc.
Quoting Beebert
How do you mean?
In terms of greatness, depth of thought, honesty etc. Nietzsche goes far beyond what Osho does, and Steiner just tried to grasp everything so to thé degree that he grasped almost nothing.
It is almost like comparing Chopin to Salieri. Or Tolstoy to JK Rowling ( in the case of Osho), and perhaps to Tolkien or CS Lewis in the case of Steiner.
I'm not quite sure Nietzsche is that great either. There's a lot of things he was blind to.
For example, you protest about eternal hell and say that it makes God evil, and that everyone should be saved. But is that what you truthfully think, or do you merely say that because of ressentiment, because you're not strong enough to accept the doctrine of hell, and that some, maybe even you, will be damned? And out of your own fear and repulsion and weakness you invent a morality which you use to judge God by, and condemn God, just because you lack the strength to accept the Truth.
Never did I say that. But the opposite to universalism isnt that great of a solution
... I would Love to hear you say that if you end up in the hell of John of Patmos, that bitter little cave man... The question is rather: How can one be so blind as to not see that not a single doctrine is more cruel than this one, that it is the opposite of "justice"? Rather anti-justice? Demand for justice as understood by a "saved" Christian is demand for a revenge that never ends. The hatred that has blossomed in the heart of someone who demands and longs for this must be so great that it has no end and no cure; that is, it must be as infinite as the hell they Believe in. It is obvious that Paul believed himself to be saved and going to heaven while others would go to hell. To Believe otherwise is to be a bad reader. Paul... Humble? I cant find the spirit of Francis of Assisi in Paul. No honest man can. It is not a question of whether this superstitious doctrine is true or not. If it were true, I wouldnt want heaven anyway. I dont have such a strong longing for "justice" that I would rejoice in seeing the enemies I "love"(as a Christian right?) burning in fire forever. I think Christians dont understand the word eternal, forever, everlasting. Eternal hell isnt a solution to anything. It is primitive and heartless and nothing besides. Even if something is true, it is obvious one often doesnt accept it. Can my intellect accept? Yes, even though vaguely. My heart? Hardly and never. I dont care about your proud fantasy that you believe that you have understood anything about God by not understanding him. One should either be honest and read Scripture like for example Spinoza did, or otherwise not even talk about justice or hell or faith in any way whatsoever if one anyway says "God's justice is beyond justice and his goodness beyond goodness". If so, then we shouldnt speak of him at all. We should leave him alone just as he appears to have left us alone.
the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by
the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.... Not many wise
men after the flesh, not men mighty, not many noble are called: But
God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise;
and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things
which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are
despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to
nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence."
Against those who seek knowledge? Against the spirit of an Aristotle and a Socrates? A Buddha and a Lao Tzu? Against an Einstein and a Newton? We are fortunate that MOST of us havent really understood the psychology behind these words of the wise Paul... It seems like nothing but projection here. He was "learned and wise", now finally he could do away with the suffering that brings and send his old self projected on all learned People around him to hell. Now this is different psychology than when Jesus rejoices that God Only reveals himself to he who is like a child. Because for Jesus, an Einstein and a Socrates was a child in his quest and hunger for knowledge and wisdom. Life as Jesus saw it was already HERE, it was finally a celebration of life. He abolished guilt and torments of conscience. Paul made these things worse, and it is rather his words that led to the trial of Galileo Galilei etc. Didnt the Church understand that in Christ's words, THEY were the "learned" and Galilei was the child?! Not so with Paul and the catholic church. "Not many noble are called"... So not all are called?
"Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? And if the world
shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?"
?!?!?! What? Shall the Saints, a John of Patmos etc. judge the world? Men who rejoice in seeing "noble" (in Paul's pathetic words) people in hell without even knowing what noble means? People who rejoice in seeing a "wise " man being judged by a "foolish" man? And yet, in reality the foolish have been like the "learned"(Aquinas, the whole Catholic Church) and the noble (an Einstein, a Galilei etc) have been like a child.
"Know ye not
that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this
life?"...
It gets worse. This seems like the height of immodesty. I can't even imagine seeing a Paul at some throne judging a Beethoven... That will not look good. And now angels too? This man must really have thought that he was the centre of the universe...
So these are examples that I react against. There is no sense of life in the present in a man like Paul.
Even the word "damned" stinks of lies and hatred. The word itself is criminal to use in the same breath as "love". Another curious thing: The blindness among those who do not see that it is he who wrongly considers himself to be saved that condemns others to hell and come up with dogmas to tell how one is damned and who is damned and not. This IS cruelty beyond all other cruelties. Done by what authority? They claim it is by God's! Who the "wisest " among them admit they no almosg nothing about! So dont talk about what is cruel and what is not.
Wow, what great psychology! I guess even you have to Thank Nietzsche then! A bit dishonest though, dont you think? And if I judge anything, it is a fantasy and not a True living God. That is obvious based on your understanding of God
I know you Believe so. I am not surprised, you are even more biased than I am. At least I can admit that I love Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky and even esteem them higher than most if not all of the greatest writers and philosophers in history. And they both advocated christianity. But you seem unable to penetrate beyond the words and in to the spirit and psychology of what is written. Because if you did, you would see that if one admits that Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky is great but do not admit that Nietzsche is great, one either lies or does not understand... Also, even if Nietzcshe was "blind" to some things (who isnt? The "great" Apostles apparently thought Christ would come back during their lifetime), it doesnt mean he wasn't great.
What's the problem? I would be punished by the Living God, not by man, and probably if God decides to punish me, then I absolutely deserve it, and would wish no different. God is the very standard of justice and truth. He is no man.
Quoting Beebert
How can it be unjust when God is the very criteria by which justice is decided? :s So let's see, you're going to judge God for throwing anyone in hell based on HIS OWN CRITERIA - how does that make any sense? What you're doing here is that you're raising yourself above God - much like Lucifer - and casting down judgement upon his creation. Why? Because of your weakness - you cannot accept that it is so. It is pure ressentiment and nothing else. And you form a morality which is above and beyond God himself, which you then use to judge God. That's nonsense.
Quoting Beebert
Sure, since now you're referring to people.
Quoting Beebert
St. Paul says:
Everyone, including St. Paul, have been working out their salvations with fear and trembling.
Quoting Beebert
If we were to have a punishment of torturing someone then we would be a cruel and violent nation. Why? "Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord" You don't seem to understand the distinction between creature and Creator. Yes, it would be immoral for us creatures to set up hell. The same isn't true for God.
Quoting Beebert
Why? We speak to share God's mysteries. Mysteries by their very nature transcend the understanding, but are not therefore false. Furthermore, we speak to praise God - the fact that God is beyond all classifications and understanding illustrates God's greatness and supremacy. He is not in the pocket of a tiny little Einstein.
Quoting Beebert
It was right for Galileo to be tried. He had absolutely no proof that the telescope, the new instrument which he used to make his measurements even measured accurately. He was using this instrument to measure the heavens, an instrument for which there was no empirical backing whatsoever. It's like me coming up with a new instrument, and then like a child insisting that I am right, and the whole scientific community is wrong in requesting further study of the instrument before the conclusions based on its measurements can be accepted.
And that's not the bad part. The bad part is that he published and insisted, even when asked to reconsider and verify, that he is right. He was absolutely wrong, and the Church was right. The Church applied the scientific method in judging Galileo. We were not yet ready to consider the telescope a valid instrument for making the measurements. Of course, Galileo did happen to be right, BUT he had no way of knowing he was right when he came up with it. It was Galileo who was the irrational child stomping his feet, and it was the Church who was rational and applying the scientific method. If you read Feyerabend's Against Method, you will see this particular instance discussed in more detail.
Quoting Beebert
Yep. What's wrong with that? Have you not read what Jesus Christ Himself says?! Matthew 19:28
That is not Paul, John's or anyone else's invention. Jesus Himself said it.
Quoting Beebert
Foolish. I don't think Einstein was "noble". Or Galileo for that matter.
Quoting Beebert
Why? You are judged based on moral considerations, not musical and compositional skill. You can be an unrepentant rapist who nevertheless writes the greatest music. So what?! You think that somehow that excuses you?! :s You're excused from having to follow moral rules because you're "great"? What kind of nonsense is this?
Quoting Beebert
No, they never said they can judge for God.
Quoting Beebert
Truly.
Quoting Beebert
Why so? Nietzsche did have some good points, I never denied it did I?
Quoting Beebert
Sure, but your biggest problem is dealing with your anxiety. You will conquer your anxiety by being strong - by being okay with the idea of you yourself going to hell. It's a possibility that all of us have to take into consideration. Any one of us may end up in hell. We work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
Yes, Nietzsche is great. In comparison to Hume ;) .
And that's not the bad part. The bad part is that he published and insisted, even when asked to reconsider and verify, that he is right. He was absolutely wrong, and the Church was right. The Church applied the scientific method in judging Galileo. We were not yet ready to consider the telescope a valid instrument for making the measurements. Of course, Galileo did happen to be right, BUT he had no way of knowing he was right when he came up with it. It was Galileo who was the irrational child stomping his feet, and it was the Church who was rational and applying the scientific method. If you read Feyerabend's Against Method, you will see this particular instance discussed in more detail."
Be consequent here, and stop being stupid. If you say that the Church was right because it was scientific, then surely you must remain honest based on your convictions and admit it was wrong. It was wrong to start with to even pretend to have the authority to trial someone for a discovery, no matter how true it was.
The Church back in the day was doing what the scientific community is doing today (because most of the scientists were also priests, because priests were mostly the ones who had access to the required education). The scientific community also "trials" people today. If you get trialed and thrown out, your papers won't be accepted for publication anymore. It's the same thing.
I am absolutely being honest. Yes, the Church was wrong (ultimately), but it took the right decision at that time. It was the decision that should have been taken by ANY rational person.
You dont understand my words. And you havent understood Paul, so talking about Scripture is obviously meaningless. Isnt he the predestined to glory? "And if I judge anything, it is a fantasy and not a True living God. That is obvious based on your understanding of God"... I hope you actually did understand what I meant here. I havent judged God according to you. I havent set myself up against God like Lucifer according to you, when you claim that it is just your own wish to dominate a discussion. Because you judge, and you claim God to be beyond language. You also claim that Nietzsche never attacked the True God. What makes you fantasize that I do?
We don't know if he is, but probably he is. He had a direct encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, and many things were revealed to him, compared to most other Christians.
Quoting Beebert
If you believe your own words with regards to hell to be true, then you at least intend to attack whom you perceive the real God to be.
Very true! But that God might as well be... You know
The historical Jesus or?...
?
Quoting Beebert
How do you know? Feyerabend is a scholar (and an atheist by the way). He thought the Church acted rationally. And I think so too. The evidence is absolutely in their favor. They may have wanted to dominate (who knows what they really wanted), but the facts are such that they had a right to act the way they did.
Quoting Beebert
Back in that day yes, because there was no other way to prevent them from publishing their works. Today no, because we have scientific journals, and if you don't get published in the relevant journals you will be ignored by the scientific community anyway. It was a more barbaric way of police-ing what happens. Wasn't Nietzsche the one who said that as societies develop, their punishments get lighter or something to that effect, but only because the societies get stronger and have stronger means of preventing harm?
:-}
The fallacy behind this reasoning is so obvious I dont even need to explain it to you. To start with: You didnt answer my post that already answered to more than half of what you say here. But let me start: God's justice is beyond our comprehension of justice you claim over and over again. I dont know this God. Therefore I judge what I know, and Based on that, the human idea of eternal punishment being justice is more reprehensible than any crime ever committed.
Faith? Or Works? Or both?
You misunderstand. God is incomprehensible, BUT we do know that He is the standard of justice and truth, for there is nothing higher than God. Therefore you cannot judge God by the human idea of justice and eternal punishment, that is foolish, since you already know that God is the very standard of justice and truth.
Quoting Beebert
Both. There is no faith without works, and no authentic works without faith.
Who knows? Surely only those who God has revealed this to would know it. Otherwise you base Everything on human ideas and might as well call anything justice. Dont you know how language evolves? Without revelation, why not say "God is the very standard of injustice and falsehood. He IS injustice and falsehood"
Yes, but we do have access to revelation. You need grounds for questioning something, and such grounds are in this case missing.
Quoting Beebert
Because that is absurd, we would never form that conception of God.
" we would never form that conception of God."
Are you saying we have invented a Conception of God where God is Beautiful truth for the righteous while the damned shall too consider their eternal torture as something wonderful and Beautiful because it is decided by the Beautiful God? So you say: "We would never form a disastrous conception of God, because God is Truth and Truth is just, lovely, beuatiful, Good" and at the same time "God can do what he wants. He can torture you without you having the right to question him because God is good." What the hell are you talking about? You know what, you reason in an unrespectable and unacceotable way not worth wasting time on. And you have convinced me that if I one day am "brave" enough to accept that your monster God will torture me forever, I am justified to go rape and kill everyone I see. Because God alone can judge, and I am probably damned because I refuse to accept what I believe to be a reprehensible understanding of the world. So hell for me! I take it! Now: Why not declare war against God and mankind in the meantime like Lucifer himself? You said before that Nietzsche believed truth to be ugly... I claim that is what you yourself believe. And now you try to tell me to be strong enough to accept that truth is ugly, while you meanwhile judge Nietzsche for believing such a thing! And now to the height of your lies and hypocrisy: "I believe in the True living God. Hence Truth is beuatiful"... No matter how that truth looks like right? The Only conclusion to Draw from your understanding and reasoning of God is "There is no point in neither reasoning with eachother nor trying to understand"
Christianity makes criminals worse than they already are and create enemies.
I would claim the opposite.
Also, you reason as if everything must be of the first rank in order to be causa sui. Origin out of something else is a questioning of "God", a blasphemy (yet you claim like a professional liar that I can't question christianity without revelation, But apparently I can blaspheme without revelation). The rational, the unchanging, the good, the true, the moral. These cannot have become and must therefore be causes, is that so? Why?
No I'm not. To say God is beyond reason isn't to say God is IRRATIONAL. Hence it's not meaningless at all. Beyond reason isn't the same as irrational.
Quoting Beebert
No, I take it that God is transcendent, and hence beyond good and evil for God is Creator.
Quoting Beebert
No, this doesn't follow at all. Trying to put the blame on me for your own immoral thoughts isn't going to work. You have convinced yourself of that, which is nothing but foolishness.
Quoting Beebert
Right, God alone can judge, but you've already decided you're probably damned :s Do you even believe what you're saying?
Quoting Beebert
Why would I do that? I respect, love and admire God.
Quoting Beebert
No I'm not saying it is ugly at all. That's your misinterpretation. I've already told you that God IS the very standard by which beauty (and truth and justice, etc etc.) are judged by.
Quoting Beebert
It looks ugly to you, I don't see anything ugly in the unrighteous being punished by the Living God.
Quoting Beebert
Again, beyond reason =/ irrational.
Quoting Beebert
You are projecting once again.
Quoting Beebert
We don't understand what "eternal" means in "eternal hell". You seem to understand it so very well, the rest of us not so much.
Quoting Beebert
:s Never said this. God is the Creator of both good and evil - of both pairs of the duality.
And not just this, but you believe you MAY be damned. Of course there's a small chance maybe - say 0.1% - that you're not damned. But you don't even want to play that chance. Instead, you prefer to screw all your chances of salvation, because why not, 0.1% is too small for you to accept! Only 100% will do!
Who are we? Historically you Christians seem to have understood it quite well. Do you then at least have any idea of what it means?
actually they are not
Everyone else.
Quoting Beebert
No, I'm not sure if eternal = infinite temporal duration.
Quoting Beebert
Of what use is this insult?
Omg what made you draw that conclusion from what I said?
It wasn't an insult, it was praise.
Really? Here comes the psychologist again. Well then ... At least I have something in common with St Paul
Me neither. If it wasn't an unending punishment that goes on for all eternity
What happened here? I was talking about me not you. If you misunderstand so gravely what I write then surely you have at least said one true thing: We can't have a discussion.
So I take it that you don't respect, admire and love God then? :s
Because you said if God is transcendent then it is meaningless to speak about Him. And that's false.
But
1. God is beyond Good and evil
2. What is justice and truth?
It makes sense to question a theology maybe, but not to question God. You can think a theology is wrong, and that's entirely different. So far you haven't spoken of a theology being wrong, but rather of God being evil, etc.
Sure, hence he decides what is good and what is evil, just like he decides what is just and unjust.
Quoting Beebert
Those are too large questions, you need to be more specific. Truth for example doesn't have just one definition. A sentence being true is different from a a situation in the world being true, which is different from an emotion being true and so forth. Truth doesn't have only one sense.
Why?
And why would you think that your idea of good and evil can be applied to judge God?
Interesting, thanks.
Consider what you really are asking here. A democratic question? What is this God you speak of and that which I speak about?
Example:
"What makes you think that your idea lf good and evil can judge whether what Stalin did was evil or not?"
Is that the concept of God you talk about?
Stalin is a created being, not an uncreated Creator.
Btw you didnt answer the question
Created beings, obviously. What's your point?
Okay, sure, so what's the point? You don't seem to like the idea of eternal hell. Why not? Can you - a created being - decide what the just punishment is better than the uncreated God? If the uncreated God decided that eternal hell is the just punishment, why would you say it's unjust? Based on what?
I have found his philosophical works very interesting, and his theosophical works baffling; baffling both as to their meaning and the reason that he chose to write them.
I didn't say you must like the idea, because as I said we're not sure if eternal refers to infinite temporal duration. It might refer to that. I said that you should be capable to be fine with it if it DOES indeed mean infinite temporal duration. That I do not know. God knows.
"If the uncreated God decided that eternal hell is the just punishment, why would you say it's unjust? Based on what?"
Why? What do you mean? If he decides so I can accept that there is not much to do about it. But that is or. Based on our language it would be subjective to call it just/unjust. Just=What I want. Unjust=What I dont want. That is often how banal we are. But if we were honest, we would probably say "It is neither just or unjust. It is what it is"
Based on the same reason why you wouldnt enjoy it if I came to your door and tortured you in various ways.
Now two questions:
1. On what bases do you value what is just and unjust? What is derrived from your own banality and what is derrived from the True living God?
2. Considering the first question and granted that you answer it honestly; what would you say if God tortured everyone because he found it to be fun and just? If he, because he is justice, creates mankind just in order to play with it, deceive it and torture it endlessly without saving anyone? Would you agree with calvinists that it is just? Just in what way then? You dont know the mind of God, so isnt it better to look at it from a human Perspective?
Objections shouldn’t start with injustice. It will always fall prey to either the opposed moral position or speculation about the nature of hell. As a beginning point, to call an God’s treatment of humanity and hell an injustice isn’t at all convincing. A better window into the failures of Christianity is the question of human weakness.
Is God successful, not in the sense of morality, but with respect to the question overcoming human weakness? We begin with with the question you were asking in another thread: how can human weakness be overcome? How do we get beyond death, pain and suffering which haunts us here on Earth?
Under this measure, Christianity is an abject failure. It cannot overcome human weakness for millions of unbelievers. Indeed, Christianity is constituted by the presence of human weakness, for it specifies the hierarchy of Christian (strong) and non-Christian (weak). If our concern is overcoming the weakness of human death or the suffering instituted by worldly conflict, a Christian world is amongst the greatest tragedies, a natural disaster constituting human weakness of millions of people.
If someone is purely concerned with the question of overcoming human weakness (as opposed to the limits of overcoming human weakness in the world, be they defined by ability or morality), Christianity is a failed cure. Why would anyone concerned only with overcoming human weakness be attracted to Christianity as an ideal? Such a world leaves millions of unbelievers with human weakness. If it really just is human weakness that matters, the ideal solution is one of many possible outcomes where non-believers are also granted the strength of victory over death and sin.
Christianity is only effective at overcoming human weakness for the Christian. It an absolute disaster for any one concerned about the human weakness of everyone, even if it does happen to be just— a tragedy of the order of having to let someone starve to death so another can have food, only multiplied into the millions.
God caused people to disobey him (Rom 11:32). If they do not understand God's message it is because he has made their minds dull (Rom 11:8) and caused them to be stubborn (Rom 9:18). God prevents the Gospel from being preached in certain areas (Act 16:6-7) and he fixes long before it will happen when a person will be born and when he or she will die (Act 17:26). Those who were going to be saved were chosen by God before the beginning of time (ii Tim 1:9 Eph 1:11). If a person has faith and is thereby saved, their faith comes from God, not from any effort on their part (Eph 2:9-10). One may ask "If a person can only do what God predetermines them to do, how can God hold them responsible for their actions?" The Bible has an answer for this question.
But one of you will say to me: "If this is so, how can God find fault with anyone? For who can resist God's will?" But who are you, my friend, to answer God back? A clay pot does not ask the man who made it: "Why did you make me like this?" After all, the man who makes the pot has the right to use the clay as he wishes, and to make two pots from one lump of clay, one for special occasions and one for ordinary use. And the same is true of what God has done (Rom 9:19-22).
In other words, based on Scripture and based on your own typically christian understanding of morality, evil, injustice etc, to out of that make the conclusion that God appears to be unjust, evil, capricious, sadistic and immoral or at best a moral monster doesnt seem far of. And the hypocritical and evil thing seems to be to object it and call it blasphemy. Sure, you might use your typical excuse and say "God is just because he chooses what is just. He is God". Sure. But does he then give us certain rules in what justice and morality etc is, but follows other instincts for himself?
I know you Will object to this, I guess it is a matter of taste; but to me it seems obvious that one of the major and most genius discoveries of Nietzsshe is his understanding of the apostle Paul as a genius in hatred.
If God is unchangeable and eternal and outside of time, then this must mean that Everything that has come in to existence out of him must be either only representation and appearence, or eternally existing outside of time (That again means that this world is just like Schopenhauer understood it, which would give the writers of the upanishads right), otherwise God went from Being the only Being, in to being he who created everything. Or perhaps God WASN'T before he created? Perhaps Stendhal said it best: "God's only excuse is that he doesn't exist".
“When it comes to how we should deal with evil doers, the Bible, in the book of Romans, is very clear: God has endowed rulers full power to use whatever means necessary — including war — to stop evil,” Jeffress said. “In the case of North Korea, God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong Un.”
Who is the man behind these words? And evangelical pastor and advisor to Trump. A typical example of what Paul's Words can lead to.
An idea of an idea.
Quoting Agustino
And you presuppose that there are different types of beings based on faith.
Quoting Agustino
Human experience of the transcendent? You can't know that. Pure hamfisting here.
Quoting Agustino
We're not the ones doing the limiting, the world is.
Quoting Agustino
They don't claim? What? So, demons in themselves claim to be transcendent, therefore they are? You've made no sense at all here...
Where the fuck are you pulling this shit from? Christianity doesn't claim to have a "cure", nor does it use Nietzschean words like strong or weak to categorize people. But if it did, it would claim that we are all weak and in need of Christ. Sin, which is the word you're looking for, is not a curable condition. No Church father has ever claimed the contrary.
+1
Why is that Christianity's failure, and not rather the failure of the unbelievers?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I think Christianity does make death and suffering easier to bear for that matter. As Nietzsche said, he who has a why, can bear almost any how.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Because according even to you it works for the believers? >:O So if they become believers it will work for them?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
:D
Soon we're going to get to an infinite regress of an idea of an idea, etc. This doesn't really work because obviously the number 2 isn't the same as the idea of the number 2. A circle, isn't the same as the idea of a circle. A circle is a concept, in other words, a relationship between a set of points.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
No, not at all, I presuppose this by just looking at the world. I don't encounter just physical objects in the world. Emotions for example are neither physical, nor are they ideas, and yet one feels them and encounters them. By the way, please be aware that I'm using "being" in the philosophical sense.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Why? Human experience of the transcendent is so common - our history is littered with examples of theophanies.
God in His essence is both changing and unchanging at one and the same time - obviously. I don't even know why you mention this, as if I didn't already know that the God of the Bible is a transcendent God.
Quoting Beebert
:s As if Aquinas denied the transcendence and mystery of God... Quite the contrary, he said reason goes only so far, and ascribes properties to God ANALOGICALLY. But of course, you probably critique him without knowing all those subtleties, much like Nietzsche. It's no fun to put up a strawman and then burn it.
Quoting Beebert
By sovereign we actually do mean someone who can actualise his will if he so desires.
Quoting Beebert
That's not what it says.
"For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all."
Quoting Beebert
"According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear"
As I've told you many times, this means that God allowed them to persist in their sin. It's metaphorical language. You seem to have started to read the Bible like John MacArthur :P
Quoting Beebert
False. Rather God prevents certain of the Apostles from preaching there. Why? Because they were meant by God to preach in different places. There were others meant to preach in Asia.
"Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia, After they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered them not."
Quoting Beebert
Yes, all humans have been predestined to find their joy only in God and by serving God's purposes. Yep, our purpose was predestined and given to us before the world began. We were also predestined to exist, etc.
"In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will"
"Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began"
Quoting Beebert
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."
Yes, it does come from God, doesn't everything, including your intellect for example come from God?! Where do you think it comes from, the devil?!
Quoting Beebert
Nope, that's not what it says in those passages. You cannot cite even one single instance of a man doing what he does because God predetermines him to do so. And even if God predetermined them, He could still hold them responsible so long as they have free will. God predetermined them to have free will too.
Quoting Beebert
Well it is blasphemy because you're purposefully misinterpreting what holy Scripture says, in a manner that is quite a bit like John MacArthur to tell you the truth.
Quoting Beebert
Well yes, God has endowed them with this power, where else do you think this power is coming from?! :s Oh the devil, you're going to say. Well who endowed the devil with power?
And there's nothing wrong with fighting evil by force.
Quoting Beebert
Incomplete interpretation.
Really, I'd like to have a discussion with you, but so far you've just been strawmanning and purposefully misinterpreting things so that they fit with the story you want to tell. If you want to have a discussion, please put more effort in deciphering the meaning of what you read in light of Apostolic Tradition. Otherwise it's quite pointless, as you seem to be fixated to interpret things in such a way that they fit the story you want to say, on an a priori basis.
I don't know, but you keep raising questions upon questions (which have little to do with one another), and then when I answer a bunch of them, you always ignore the answers, or avoid answering the questions that I'm asking you. Below are just a FEW of the many things which you've never even bothered to answer:
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
Not to mention pretty much my entire previous post..
"What's the problem? I would be punished by the Living God, not by man, and probably if God decides to punish me, then I absolutely deserve it, and would wish no different. God is the very standard of justice and truth. He is no man."
Okay, good for you! Except I did answer this one. I answered what was meaningful to reply on here, that "God is the very standard of justice and truth" as the reason for you wishing eternal torture if you deserve it. Though you know right, that all people deserve this according to Christian dogma?
"I don't know, but you keep raising questions upon questions (which have little to do with one another)"
Give examples please.
"Why? You are judged based on moral considerations, not musical and compositional skill. You can be an unrepentant rapist who nevertheless writes the greatest music. So what?! You think that somehow that excuses you?! :s You're excused from having to follow moral rules because you're "great"? What kind of nonsense is this?"
No I dont, I am rather looking for what motivates you to believe christianity out of everything, out of all religions? I asked this question before, but LO! You didnt answer it! (I wanted another argument than the historical one)
"What have you done to be more precise?"
I doubt I want to share that with you anymore. If I choose to, that time will come when it comes.
"No, these are not a progression, but rather three different ways of being in the world. They are "moods" rather than paths. Kierkegaard's ultimate point is that the aesthetic mood is a forgetfulness of the ethical mood, and the ethical mood is a forgetfulness of the religious mood. In-so-far as this relationship holds true, this means that the religious mood does not deny the ethical and the aesthetical, but rather subsumes and incorporates them in itself. Aufheben."
Here I saw no reason to reply since there was nothing to say except "Okay I see".
"What's the use of that? What do you think you'll achieve with it?"
Sorry, I dont remember what this is even about. Provide me with the context please.
"I would pray that God forgive me and spare me of that fate, but if that's what He wants, then I will accept it, for Him. Afterall, He too died for me, why shouldn't I be willing to suffer for Him if I must? It is not up to a servant to question his Master in the end."
What shall I even answer to this(which you also took out of question)? "Okay I see" once again. What kind of nonsense are you doing here, seriously?
Why? What do you mean? If he decides so I can accept that there is not much to do about it. But that is or. Based on our language it would be subjective to call it just/unjust. Just=What I want. Unjust=What I dont want. That is often how banal we are. But if we were honest, we would probably say "It is neither just or unjust. It is what it is"
Based on the same reason why you wouldnt enjoy it if I came to your door and tortured you in various ways."
I cant find you answering this one.
Or these:
"Now two questions:
1. On what bases do you value what is just and unjust? What is derrived from your own banality and what is derrived from the True living God?
2. Considering the first question and granted that you answer it honestly; what would you say if God tortured everyone because he found it to be fun and just? If he, because he is justice, creates mankind just in order to play with it, deceive it and torture it endlessly without saving anyone? Would you agree with calvinists that it is just? Just in what way then? You dont know the mind of God, so isnt it better to look at it from a human Perspective?"
"You see, one of my points is that it is not working to defend God morally from a human perspective, because for one thing, slave minds and selfish Peoples without courage are often actually those who subject to the authority of the church, while those who oppose its claims and are braver than me and say "I accept the idea of hell but not God himself, nor his creation", might oppose it all because they dont care about whether they end up in hell or not. To not care where you end up; is that a virtue according to you?"
"I would also love to hear your arguments about Why christianity is true and the only way to salvation rather than the other religions. Preferably another argument than the historical one"
What happened to answering these?
Yes, I am aware of that. I haven't answered them because they bring up points which are not relevant to the discussion we were having. I can address, for example, why I think Christianity is true, but it wouldn't be very relevant to our discussion here or the thread.
Quoting Beebert
And having that as a goal you expect us to be able to have a meaningful conversation? :P
Quoting Beebert
My goal is to understand your position, and show you where it is and where it is not compatible with Christianity as I understand it, especially as it relates to Nietzsche.
Quoting Beebert
I disagree with this. If everything is subjective, then we cannot have a discussion with each other, because a discussion presupposes we will both strive to attain some objective standard and truth.
Quoting Beebert
You are a human being, not the living God, so there is no comparison here. You're not my Creator. I have to keep repeating this same distinction a BILLION times because you don't seem to read what I write carefully. You - a creature - cannot do what God - the Creator - can do. You are bound by the Law, God isn't.
Quoting Beebert
It's His Creation. If He wants to end it one day, who are we to say He can't? :s Indeed, it would be unjust for us to tell God what He should and shouldn't do with His creation.
Quoting Beebert
Reason, revelation, faith, conscience - a multitude of factors goes into judging what is just and unjust.
And there's nothing wrong with fighting evil by force."
If you Believe that this sick evangelical pastor is right (because he pretends to be christian or what? How biased and dishonest if so), something is seriously wrong. You would like it if Trump started war? Brilliant... You think these statements are smart? My... The question isnt what God has or hasn't endowed people with, you answer to something completely different than the spirit of my post intended to say. The question was: Do you see what Paul 's sentences lead to? What has that to do with God now? "Because God wrote the bible"? Please, not YET... Now regarding fighting evil with force ... Doesnt sound very enlightened does it? I think both Buddha and Jesus would disagree with you. Wasn't it Jesus who said "Do not resist evil"?
"Well it is blasphemy because you're purposefully misinterpreting what holy Scripture says, in a manner that is quite a bit like John MacArthur to tell you the truth."
Purposefully? Sure, I might misinterpet. But why do you call it purplsefully? Well... MacArthur is a devil, so I Guess that makes me one too.
>:O >:O >:O And this passage:
"What belongs to greatness. Who will attain anything great if he does not find in himself the strength and the will to inflict great suffering? Being able to suffer is the least thing; weak women and even slaves often achieve virtuosity in that. But not to perish of internal distress and uncertainty when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of the suffering -- that is great, that belongs to greatness"
Gave great comfort to Heinrich Himmler who headed the SS and came up with the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem :) . I don't think I have to tell you who wrote them. See what Nietzsche's sentences lead to?! >:O
Really these are childish arguments.
Of course you fight evil with force, what do you think?! Are you crazy? You'll sit around "loving" the burglar who is killing your wife, or grab the sword and cut his head off?!
Quoting Beebert
Yes, in a different context.
Will you Hate the burglar or feel compassion?
That's not what you said the first time. So what happened, did you change your mind, or?
Quoting Beebert
I do believe that Kim Jong Un is evil and should at one point or another be fought with force. He has enslaved all of North Korea and forces his people to live deluded and in horrible conditions. I'm quite sure that for Trump though it's about his (or America's) ego.
No, he actually wasn't. He told them they're headed for hell. You know, there's a reason the Nazis loved Nietzsche, but didn't like Christianity so much.
The Nazis loved Romans 13. That is what I talked about.
What time?
Sure, if he attacks it will not be nice.
Quoting Beebert
Proof?
Quoting Beebert
This one:
Quoting Beebert
Of course I will hate the burglar - that's why I'd cut his head off and save my wife!
No that's what you say the most important question is now - I'm not willing to address it here. You certainly didn't think so at the beginning of this discussion.
Now there's a lot of stuff YOU haven't addressed, so I find it quite unbelievable that you claim I decide what discussions we have
I didn't claim you changed your mind.
Quoting Agustino
"Of course I will hate the burglar - that's why I'd cut his head off and save my wife!"
You are not enlightened. You are not Christian. You dont love your enemies. You are exactly what Nietzsche blamed Christians for being and that is Why you dislike him. Discussion over.
If that's what being enlightened means, then I certainly don't want to be enlightened. Do you? I love my wife, so I hate the burglar. You can't have both.
Yeah, the Nietzsche who wrote:
Regarding Nietzsche; at least he was honest, you seem to be the opposite of that
That's precisely the point, he wasn't. He was a coward himself.
As for me, I was very honest that I'd cut the burglar's head off and save my wife, why are you saying that I'm not honest?
Regarding Nazis and Romans 13:
http://theopoet4camp.blogspot.se/2010/03/hitler-and-nazis-use-of-romans-13_12.html?m=1
I choke! I choke! A ressentimental hater in the house! Please! Fresh air! Hypocrite...
You provide the best answer for yourself:
Quoting Beebert
I see nothing in here about dishonesty, sorry.
Yes, nowhere in what you cite is there something about "loving" the burglar who is trying to kill my wife. Quite the opposite, there is something about loving my wife and having to protect her even if it means sacrificing myself to do so.
Except that the idea of one's actions being predetermined contradicts the idea of having free will. The having (as opposed to the use) of faculties (such as free will) being predetermined is a different matter.
So do you claim that the Bible teaches that God controls our actions?
No, YOU haven't understood that correctly.
Quoting Agustino
I'm not claiming anything about the Bible. I was just responding to your statement that appeared to be saying that people's actions could be predetermined by God and yet be freely-willed. If that is not what you were saying then there would be no disagreement.
Quoting Agustino
In this passage, what I had in mind by God "predetermining" them to something is, if, say, they are born in a certain family, certain time period, etc. - this does give them a set of options that are pre-determined and wouldn't be available for them if they were born in a different place, to different parents, in different times, in different nations, etc. So because God determines the options they have available, in this sense they are predetermined to act in one of those ways.
"Quite the opposite, there is something about loving my wife and having to protect her even if it means sacrificing myself to do so."
Huh? Where the hell did that come from? What does that have to do with the spirit of the written Word in the Sermon on the Mount? What does hating a burglur have to do with protecting your wife? I dont have a problem with you protecting her as a christian, I have a problem with claiming to hate a burglur and wanting to slice his head off(and probably rejoicing over thinking about his misfortunate fate in the afterlife.) NOW I really Will not answer you more in this discussion. But I Will be kind and let you have the oppurtunity to have your will to power satisfied by having the last Word if you wish.
Let us say that the burglur actually kills your wife. Perhaps you werent there. Will you hate him, perhaps even look him up and take revenge? Or will you forgive him, as your savior demands?
OK, in the second sentence you deny that God predetermines what a man does, and then in the third when you say " And even if God predetermined them": I took that to mean, in reference to the second sentence: 'even if God did predetermine what a man does". If you were only meaning 'if God predetermines a man's situation, capacities, preferences, options' and so on, then I would agree that that would not be incompatible with free will.
I did actually intend to say this, because there is a sense in which God does predetermine what a man does. By, say, determining the total number of choices I can take into A B C, the choices of D E F G H etc. are excluded because they are not available to me because of my situation, faculties, etc. So in that case, God does predetermine me to do either A or B or C. I didn't mean to say that God would make me do A out of those three, for in that case, I agree with you, that I would have no free will.
But you are right perhaps I was a bit sloppy with language there. Should've explained better.
It's absolutely the failure of unbelievers, but that's the problem. Someone concerned for overcoming with overcoming human weakness of death and suffering of the world despises such failure.
With respect to the question you asked in your other thread, a successful solution to human weakness would remove the failure of the unbeliever. It's the weakness of death and it's suffering of the world. A weakness the Christian God is incapable of removing by [i]God's own[/I] intention. God is no great solution to human weakness.
A great solution to human weakness would eliminate the failure of unbelievers too, for it would mean less people are caught in the suffering and death of the world. Christianity is only for the self-satisfied who want themselves to be better than everyone else, who want the weakness of unbelievers.
Exactly. That's my point precisely. Christianity cannot remove human weakness from the unbeliever. It is a failure at overcoming human weakness for large numbers of people.
I wasn't suggesting Christianity claimed or needed to do otherwise, only pointing out it doesn't meet the rehtoric of "grand solution to everyone worldy death and suffering." It cannot save the unbeliever. It advocates that human weakness.
You are pretending you don't reveal in the screams of the burglar.
The impact of your morality on others is ignored. You will not admit the quoted passage to which you objected to so strongly describes [i]you[/I] inflicting suffering and death on the burglar.
Without the idea of the number 2, you can't conceive of the number 2 in and of itself. What I'm arguing here is that the number 2 in and of itself is hidden behind the veil of perception, and although the number 2 in and of itself presumably brings rise to the idea of the number 2, one cannot be certain as to know that would be to know the number 2 in and of itself, totranscend the veil of perception. If you think that such is humanly possible, then I'm all ears.
Quoting Agustino
Emotions are experienced within the lens of the material, physical world, as are ideas, the immaterial like thoughts, and so on. Merely because one cannot know the immaterial in and of itself does not mean that there is more than one being in which the world is understood, only that such a phenomena is different. How different? The essence of this difference? One cannot say.
Quoting Agustino
I would agree with you if you wrote, "Human experience of what is thought to be transcendent is so common." Again, as I've said several times now, we experience the idea of what we label the transcendent, the divine, the conscious landscape, and so on and so forth. We are unable know and directly experience what we call the transcendent in and of itself. What you're getting hanged up over is where the idea of the "transcendent" comes from, which is why I've clarified just above. And to perhaps clarify another way, consider the veil of perception the same as our inability to be in another's head. My being is inseparable from yours, even if we meet and find that we're twins, wear the same hair style, think similar thoughts, etc. Fundamentally, though, we are separate, such the same as whatever the transcendent is in relation to the idea of the transcendent. If you're transcendence in and of itself, and I'm only the idea(s) attributed to you, no matter how hard we try to align ourselves and be the same, we won't be able to. Perhaps this is to say: our likeness does not confirm our sameness, nor does our difference confirm our separateness.
Okay, but this is a strange criticism to have. It's like pointing out that cleaning dishes with a vacuum cleaner isn't effective and so shame on vacuum cleaners. Really? It isn't the vacuum cleaner's intention, or purpose, to clean dishes, but to clean carpets.
I suppose you'll ask, then, what soap is the cure for dirty dishes (sin), but I'll tell you now that I don't have an answer to that.
The point isn't shame. I'm not saying God/Christianity is immoral. That's a different argument.
My point is Christianity is a failure with respect to overcoming human weakness of sin/death/worldly suffering. Just as the vacuum cleaner isn't effective at cleaning dishes, Christianity isn't an effective means of overcoming human weakness. It fails to clean sin and weakness from the unbeliever.
So for someone who has the end of human weakness in mind, Christianity isn't a beacon of hope. If they were to hope for Christianity, they would literally be a dishwasher requesting a soap that could only clean a particular subset of dishes that were meant to be clean. The point is there is a profound mismatch between what Christian likes to claim about itself ("the saviour of man" ) and what it actually amounts to (really, it is only the saviour of Christians ).
Nothing is ultimately effective in overcoming human weakness, so again, knocking Christianity for failing to overcome suffering isn't saying too much since everything fails. The difference is the sort of afterlife that is promised if you believe this and not that.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
If you have a pill that treats a certain disease, but some people who have the disease refuse to take the pill, then it is not the pill's failure to treat the illness.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
No, I don't revel in it, I would just do it because it has to be done. Not because of sadism - as Nietzsche implies in his quote - but rather out of love for my wife.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
No it doesn't, that passage describes a sadist, because what makes him great is his lack of regard for the suffering he causes. In my case, what makes my action great is my love for my wife and my desire to protect her, whatever it takes.
For sure, but that only shows the failure of the pill as a solution. It couldn't also save those who would refuse to take it. If we are to advocate and hope for the pill as a solution, it means accepting the weakness of those who will refuse it. Our enemy is not human weakness, but rather just human weakness of those would take the pill.
The point is, to the question of overcoming human weakness, Christianity is a failed cure. It desires and advocates for the weakness of unbelievers. It may be true and even just, but it is still an abject disaster at overcoming human weakness. It's incapable of helping the unbeliever.
So in the context of human weakness, say of the horror of death and anything terrible that comes afterwards, Christianity is both ineffective and amounts to a tragedy. It both advocates and is no solution to their human weakness. For all the Christian speaks of forgiveness and the overcoming of human weakness, they cannot extend it to unbelievers. If someone's goal is merely a solution to human weakness, Christianity is not attractive nor particular hopeful. There are countless other possible ways existence might go which would be better at overcoming human weakness.
If someone wanted a solution to human weakness (as opposed to merely the weakness of Christians), Christianity would be one of the first positions rejected. It is an advocate of human weakness.
Nietzsche's point is that is a far greater revealing in the given cruelty than any sadist. The sadist only revels in terms of what he wants or how he feels. In terms of sadism itself, there is the possibility of rejecting the given cruelty, for even the sadist to say: "Well, even if I want to be cruel or it would feel really good, now is not the time...".
For the sadist qua sadism, there is the possibility of denying the cruelty in favour of a cruelty of self-denial because the later is moral and the former immoral.
Morality cannot take such prisoners. You can only do whatever it takes to protect your wife. If your wife is in danger, there is no option to refrain from cruelty. You must act, no matter how much cruelty is involved or how much you would prefer it to be otherwise. In the act of obtaining a moral outcome, no quarter can be given.
Your greatness and cruelty are one the same. Had you hesitated, had you not enacted the cruelty to the the attacker to protect your wife, she would be dead and you would be a moral failure.