GENIUS FORUMS

Leyla, the female genius writes:

"Earlier, you explicitly stated that there are different orders of knowledge. Yet, here, you equate knowledge and experience. What gives?"

There are most certainly different orders of knowledge. Consider the famous 'episteme' of Michel Foucault. There is for example the 'knowledge' of some tribesman in a South American jungle, and a whole order of knowing for success and survival in his world, and there is the knowing of a modern individual.

If you were raised in that jungle, you would be Leyla Shen still, but you would have a radically different notion of the world. All your knowledge too would function differently. Our experience (upbringing, world-view, habits and conventions) is our knowledge and experience, and in that sense, sweetness, they are one, they are 'equated'.

It would really please me if we could leave it at that, and I ask again: May I go now?

You have no idea what Foucault is talking about, yet you refer to him as if his position substantiates your own.

The man makes distinctions between knowledge and experience; how could he posit such a thing as an episteme ("historic a priori") if he did not do so? Clearly, this is something you cannot do.

It would really please me if we could leave it at that, and I ask again: May I go now?

I am not here to please you, Alex. You may leave at any time you desire to so please yourself.

For my penetrating part, I have more to say on this subject and, as well as addressing brokenhead's last comment relevant to the same fundamental matter, will do so at the earliest opportunity---your impotent pleas to pull out prior to climax notwithstanding. ;-)

Alex wrote:To me the whole notion of being guided---that there is something that guides (through the roads of our incarnation) is a very mysterious idea. I studied shamanism traditions and even went to live in Venezuela as part of my 'studies'. I see spirituality through a very different lens (than most here).

It is mysterious in that it causes one to pause for lack of ready explanation. But that really should not be so. To my mind, I am a child of God. What sort of parent lets his child go without guidance? Would a good parent do that? Would God permit his children to wander aimlessly? Even the best parent can be disobeyed. I do not believe we are ever taught lessons that we cannot understand and that be the end of it. That would be wasteful. I see God as abundant but never wasteful. Whenever you are ready to be guided, your guides go to work.

Iolaus wrote:Brokenhead,

I don't think there is anything mystical about the works of God.

Yes, but the mystical life is one in which one's spiritual faculty is ignited, and one is on a journey with God/Reality in which one feels one's way using that spiritual faculty of perception; gradually it becomes stronger and faith comes. It's life in the bridal chamber, a honeymoon with God.

There's no such thing as magic, of course!

I think we are agreeing here, Iolaus. Magic is useless beyond entertainment. To think God's purpose is to entertain us would be idiotic at best. We are here to be loved and to learn to love. Once we understand that life is not a game, then we can have true fun. You do not need to be entertained when you yourself can be a part of true joy.

Oh Brokenhead,

You have given me such a small sliver of hope - can it be?? A live one?

You mentioned on another thread that you hated the notion that "Jesus died for your sins." A topic of particular interest to me.

So what's your take on the meaning of the crucifixion, was it somehow necessary, and how do you suppose people are to get this thing called salvation? I happen to loathe the mainstream dogmas on this, more than you can probably imagine.

brokenhead wrote:

"It is mysterious in that it causes one to pause for lack of ready explanation. But that really should not be so. To my mind, I am a child of God. What sort of parent lets his child go without guidance? Would a good parent do that? Would God permit his children to wander aimlessly? Even the best parent can be disobeyed. I do not believe we are ever taught lessons that we cannot understand and that be the end of it. That would be wasteful. I see God as abundant but never wasteful. Whenever you are ready to be guided, your guides go to work."

The 'mystery' in the sense I mean it is more related to some of the facts of existence, which when is in that frame of mind, are pretty overwhelming. Where is all this taking place? Why is all this taking place? How have I come to exist within a flesh body? Why am I in a placw with such cruel, harsh laws, and why is pain and suffering such part and parcel of the whole deal? Why am I in this particular situation, with all these difficulties?

If you have a 'ready explanation' for those questions, I'd sure like to hear...

If there is 'guidance from God', how does that guidance manifest itself? (One thing seems certain and that is that this guiding God 'speaks' not at all through language but through events (synchronicities), that is, it is a 'speech' that comes through the world around us in some hard to define way.) Why is that guidance such an indefinite affair? Most will grant that if there is a guiding God, he is sure going about his game strangely. Why bother with such an intricate arrangement?

The way I see things, this God is all the way round a deeply mysterious fellow. And everything about us is always shrouded in layer upon layer of mystery.

Yet I do undersstand that there are many different ways to 'understand'.

The 'mystery' in the sense I mean it is more related to some of the facts of existence, which when is in that frame of mind, are pretty overwhelming. Where is all this taking place? Why is all this taking place?

Quite often, out of the blue, it just socks me in the gut - why am I in this utterly bizarre situation? What can possibly be going on? Nothing seems real! It is so like those moments when dreaming, that I suddenly get an inkling, via the dream's absurdity, that I am surely dreaming. Sometimes I go straight into a lucid dream, and sometimes I negate the notion.

Why am I in a placw with such cruel, harsh laws, and why is pain and suffering such part and parcel of the whole deal? Why am I in this particular situation, with all these difficulties?

If you have a 'ready explanation' for those questions, I'd sure like to hear...

Would you really like to hear? It is a lot to face...

As Dante might say, our lovely planet is being held captive in the vestibule of hell. Or perhaps it's just us, and Earth has one foot in heaven, one in hell.

If there is 'guidance from God', how does that guidance manifest itself? (One thing seems certain and that is that this guiding God 'speaks' not at all through language but through events (synchronicities), that is, it is a 'speech' that comes through the world around us in some hard to define way.)

Well, for starters, if you are right and of course you are, that certainly makes that Jehovah character in the OT look a right fool for pretending to be God.

Why is that guidance such an indefinite affair? Most will grant that if there is a guiding God, he is sure going about his game strangely. Why bother with such an intricate arrangement?

Why - it is so that we may pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, the only way to become real! I.e., it is to develop faith, which is to say, to strengthen our spiritual faculty. You know, the one that lies dormant in those who can't imagine any sort of faith.

Nothing good is cheaply won. We must struggle to perceive, understand, make better choices, develop wisdom, feel our way without the physical eyes. Oh, it's really so simple. Our 5 senses don't pick up on all of the spectrum of reality. There's a bigger spectrum, much bigger. Yet there seems to be the capacity in the human brain to perceive more, however, it is oddly difficult. Some get glimpses, some don't. Those who don't, well, that's is basically what this thread is about.

Iolaus wrote:So what's your take on the meaning of the crucifixion, was it somehow necessary, and how do you suppose people are to get this thing called salvation? I happen to loathe the mainstream dogmas on this, more than you can probably imagine.

Was the crucifixion necessary? Of course not. The word "somehow" carries so much garbage that I do not have the patience to pick through it for you. You have to do that, because it is your garbage. But what you need is in there somewhere, I can tell just by the tone of your post. I am in no way putting you down. You walk out the door and you are assaulted with garbage. All I can tell you is, if you want to get rid of it, try to let as little of it stick to you as possible in the first place. That alone can work wonders on your head. If you "loathe" mainstream dogmas, you are putting yourself right in the cross-hairs of the garbage flow. If I give you a simple homework assignment, would you do it?

brokenhead wrote:

Cory Duchesne wrote:To appreciate truth is to acknowledge that the unceasing continuation of the experiencer is not only uncertain, but unlikely.

To believe in God is to trust that the experiencer will continue unceasingly.

So, in that sense, they are very at odds with each other.

This may be an accurate statement if it encapsulates the way most people view their faith.

If so, I believe they are misusing faith, they are using it to hide from the truth. I, myself, do not accept the second part of your quote, the description of faith. At least, not how you have put it. The truth is that our physical bodies will die and cease forever to exist. Faith now comes into play, where ackowledged truth falls silent. What happens to us then? Do we as sentient beings also simply cease forever to exist? If so, then we have nothing to answer for in the here and now. So rather than, as average would have it, thinking that someone is taking the rap for our sins, no one is because no one has to. We can all be like OJ - if we can get away with it, everything is cool. Faith tells you that after death, not necessarily unceasingly, the soul continues on in some fashion. So faith mandates that not only you take responsibility for your actions "like a man," as average put it. A man is only answerable to other men. Faith mandates you take responsibility as a child of God.

I see this as a case of having faith in hope, rather than having faith in truth.

The truth is we do not know what will happen at death, although the empirical evidence all seems to point to the disintegration of consciousness and therefore the end of us. Basing one’s life on the premise that one will survive death is a case of going past the truth and putting faith in a wish.

If a person is only going to assume responsibility for his relationship to truth on the proviso that he will not end at death, then he is not really having faith in truth. He is simply investing in his own future welfare.

Having faith in truth means accepting the entirety of truth whole-heartedly, without reservation, regardless of how it makes one feel, regardless of personal consequences.

What happens to us then? Do we as sentient beings also simply cease forever to exist? If so, then we have nothing to answer for in the here and now. So rather than, as average would have it, thinking that someone is taking the rap for our sins, no one is because no one has to. We can all be like OJ - if we can get away with it, everything is cool.

The very fact that, in a godless universe, everyone is free to get away with whatever they want is precisely what makes having faith in truth so remarkable.

The person who has faith in truth knows very well that he is free to stop having faith in truth any time he wants and nothing will come of it. He will not be punished. He will not be held accountable. Indeed, he will probably prosper with the sudden freedom to indulge his egotistical whims. He knows that he can do this at a moment's notice and no one will probably ever know. Or care.

And yet if he resists this temptation and continues having faith in truth it will be because he genuinely values truth for its own sake - not as a means of gaining personal benefit in an afterlife, but because he believes that living truthfully is valuable in and of itself.

Having faith in a God out of a desire to please or appease him - that is common kowtowing.

Having faith in truth with no prospect of reward - that is amazing, out of this world.

-

Having faith in anything tends to give way to the mic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzs5fKVt420

David Quinn wrote:Having faith in truth with no prospect of reward - that is amazing, out of this world.

It would also seem to contradict the cynical and egoistic view prevalent around here that all actions are taken only because they in some way benefit and reward me.

(edit: please disregard this post, my next post in this thread is what I should have written.)

Jason wrote:

David Quinn wrote:Having faith in truth with no prospect of reward - that is amazing, out of this world.

It would also seem to contradict the cynical and egoistic view prevalent around here that all actions are taken only because they in some way benefit and reward me.

In the beginning a person is truthful only if they find it more satisfying to be truthful than to be untruthful. The truth itself satisfies, rather than the approval of society or any bossy imaginary God.

David Quinn wrote:The very fact that, in a godless universe, everyone is free to get away with whatever they want is precisely what makes having faith in truth so remarkable.

The person who has faith in truth knows very well that he is free to stop having faith in truth any time he wants and nothing will come of it. He will not be punished. He will not be held accountable. Indeed, he will probably prosper with the sudden freedom to indulge his egotistical whims. He knows that he can do this at a moment's notice and no one will probably ever know. Or care.

And yet if he resists this temptation and continues having faith in truth it will be because he genuinely values truth for its own sake - not as a means of gaining personal benefit in an afterlife, but because he believes that living truthfully is valuable in and of itself.

That doesn't really fully describe my experience of these things. In a godless universe a person's own conscience often takes over some of the functions that god may have otherwise handled. Living in a godless universe myself, I am my own judge, jury and executioner. My conscience tortures me if I act against its values, and striving for truth has been deeply implanted in my conscience - to intentionally stop striving for truth would be hard, maybe even impossible, for me to bear. There would be massive guilt, huge disappointment in myself, deep feelings of failure and so on.

David wrote:

"The person who has faith in truth knows very well that he is free to stop having faith in truth any time he wants and nothing will come of it. He will not be punished. He will not be held accountable. Indeed, he will probably prosper with the sudden freedom to indulge his egotistical whims. He knows that he can do this at a moment's notice and no one will probably ever know. Or care."

Yeah, Jason, I saw the same thing. I think our own 'conscience', which is really a very intricate and delicate thing, a very sophisticated part of our own consciousness which is the part of us with mysterious relationship to other consciousnesses and who knows perhaps 'worlds beyond' or as CG Jung put it, to 'psychoid consciousness'.

The truly amazing aspects of life begin in a prepared mind, a cultivated consciousness, which is at the end of a long biological journey. It seems to me that that is where and when human consciousness makes contact with higher being, with extremely sophisticated levels of feeling and thought.

"He will not be punished. He will not be held accountable."

So, QRS-tianity gets it wrong again. Perhaps we need a more sophisticated definition of 'the law of karma', and perhaps, as you say, we might recognize that we participate (psychologically?) in masterminding our own life course. If something inside of us doesn't like what we are doing, it will likely guide us (trap us) in circumstances where we have to take pause and consider things deeply.

A shipwreck, after all, is going to require a leap of one kind or another... Why not towards faith?

It is a basic tenet that one only abandons ship when it has become necessary to "step up" into the lifeboat, to do so before then is to forgo faith (in your vessel), and reach for an illusory (inauthentic) extension of your own life (existence).

Immortality and eternal existence are not necessarily the same thing. Indeed, beliefs of this kind define your faith, or lack thereof, or disbelief (Ah! A tri-value proposition!).

I've never been able to understand the hostility that such basic common sense engenders in some folks. This is all tautology, e.g. true by virtue of its logical form alone, and prefaced by a seemingly innocent question.

Jason wrote: In a godless universe a person's own conscience often takes over some of the functions that god may have otherwise handled. Living in a godless universe myself, I am my own judge, jury and executioner.

Nietzsche has explored that one endlessly by pointing out this supposed "own conscience" is completely defined by the remains of Christianity in our culture. In other words: ones universe is not godless because one stops believing in a god. One is still living in a world dominated by Christian values, breast fed to the infant, fortified and enforced by education and media, family and friends.

Only a true nihilist has shattered all the old 'tables' and its damaged conscience and then experiences some egotistical form of freedom for a while perhaps. If there's a dedication to truth the last table would be smashed as well and truth remains.

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:

Jason wrote: In a godless universe a person's own conscience often takes over some of the functions that god may have otherwise handled. Living in a godless universe myself, I am my own judge, jury and executioner.

Nietzsche has explored that one endlessly by pointing out this supposed "own conscience" is completely defined by the remains of Christianity in our culture.

I've read almost no Nietzsche. Much of a person's conscience is the product of the culture in which they are raised, I don't know about "completely" though. A part of it may be innate, genetically encoded, perhaps as behaviours which help social animals operate productively together. Also, people are obviously capable of departing somewhat from the conscience that they imbibe as youngsters, the generalized conscience of the majority. Whether that departing is seen as just a further expression and outgrowth of their inherited conscience or not is...a bit complex.

I'm not sure how important it is to make the "Christian" distinction. No doubt there are some characteristics perculiar to a Chrisitianity-infused culture, and those impact on the conscience in their own way, but a lot of basic morality and conscience seems to be pretty standard across most or all cultures.

In other words: ones universe is not godless because one stops believing in a god.

Hmmm, that seems more an attempt at clever wordplay and/or appearing to be deep and original than anything else, I think. Fails in all regards for me. An atheist/agnostic doesn't believe in god, the deity, the being, so the universe is very much godless. There's still a lot that is lost when god the deity is eradicated, even though the conscience may step in to take on some of god's functions.

One is still living in a world dominated by Christian values, breast fed to the infant, fortified and enforced by education and media, family and friends.

Only a true nihilist has shattered all the old 'tables' and its damaged conscience and then experiences some egotistical form of freedom for a while perhaps. If there's a dedication to truth the last table would be smashed as well and truth remains.

Where does the nihilist get his motivation to smash the 'tables'? Is he alone somehow cut off from the forces of conscience that he was initially controlled by? Would it not be relatively easy to argue that his supposed table smashing is merely the result of a certain type of tangled conscience too?

I understand(or more accurately often choose to use as a premise) that my actions are motivated by self-interest and probably largely imparted into me by my culture, but why would one then take the step to eradicate absolutely all their inherited conscience? There can be full understanding of the nature of conscience without this eradication step. Does Nietzsche propose eradicating it all, and what is his reasoning for doing so?

Diebert, are you a nihilist? Do you propose nihilism? I get the sense that you rather rarely propose solid statements of action or judgement.(I'm not saying that your lack of 'solidity' is why you might be a nihilist, rather, I am hoping for you to put forward a solid statement that in this case just happens to be about nihilism.)

Kevin Solway wrote:

Jason wrote:

David Quinn wrote:Having faith in truth with no prospect of reward - that is amazing, out of this world.

It would also seem to contradict the cynical and egoistic view prevalent around here that all actions are taken only because they in some way benefit and reward me.

In the beginning a person is truthful only if they find it more satisfying to be truthful than to be untruthful. The truth itself satisfies, rather than the approval of society or any bossy imaginary God.

If your God is bossy, then he is indeed imaginary.

David Quinn wrote:The truth is we do not know what will happen at death, although the empirical evidence all seems to point to the disintegration of consciousness and therefore the end of us. Basing one’s life on the premise that one will survive death is a case of going past the truth and putting faith in a wish.

If a person is only going to assume responsibility for his relationship to truth on the proviso that he will not end at death, then he is not really having faith in truth. He is simply investing in his own future welfare.

Having faith in truth means accepting the entirety of truth whole-heartedly, without reservation, regardless of how it makes one feel, regardless of personal consequences.

The empirical evidence of what happens at death varies from one observer to the next. Perhaps you need to be more of a seeker. Listen more and propound less. Your information is rather paltry.

If you equate having faith with holding on to a wish, you neither have nor understand true faith. A wish entails ego. True faith does not - it is the very acknowledgement of one's own limitations.

You cannot have faith in the truth per se because the truth itself can do nothing. It simple is. It is knowledge. It can reside in a mute book, for instance. You can only have faith in someone who knows the truth and represents the truth. Faith is for the living.

Having faith in a God out of a desire to please or appease him - that is common kowtowing.

Making a statement such as this demonstrates nothing but pride. Kowtowing before men is demeaning. Kowtowing before God has no meaning, as it is for priests and other fools. Kowtowing before God demonstrates fear when what he wants is love, the same love he gives you.

Having faith in truth with no prospect of reward - that is amazing, out of this world.

If you have "faith in the truth" you had better expect no reward because you will get none. Because that amounts to no more than having faith in yourself. It is setting yourself up above others. The world is full of vile people quite capable of rewarding themselves without the benefit of knowing the truth. If, instead of "having faith in the truth," you dare to actually know the truth, then you wil find yourself having faith in God, and your rewards will be boundless. Not of your own doing, as your very life is not of your own doing and is the one thing you treasure above all else.

You extoll yourself, David. You and Kevin both. And you never seem to grow tired of it. Remarkable.

Jason wrote:

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:

Jason wrote: In a godless universe a person's own conscience often takes over some of the functions that god may have otherwise handled. Living in a godless universe myself, I am my own judge, jury and executioner.

Nietzsche has explored that one endlessly by pointing out this supposed "own conscience" is completely defined by the remains of Christianity in our culture.

Much of a person's conscience is the product of the culture in which they are raised, I don't know about "completely" though. A part of it may be innate, genetically encoded, perhaps as behaviours which help social animals operate productively together.

True enough. But in the same vein one could claim that Christianity might be genetically encoded as well, to help 'social animals' to behave and cope, and so on. Chicken or egg (and the rooster) again. I get your drift though, point is that one could start to question if you can talk about being your own judge and jury while in the same breath implying you're drifting on the whims of a struggle between 'selfish' genes.

An atheist/agnostic doesn't believe in god, the deity, the being, so the universe is very much godless. There's still a lot that is lost when god the deity is eradicated, even though the conscience may step in to take on some of god's functions.

My view on this is that a lot was lost when god the deity was created and nothing lost when eradicated, some tidying up perhaps. My stand would be that god is way more than being some deity, he's usually experienced by deists in what actually happens (the 'good' in people, conscience, reason, seeing the difference between good and bad). By removing the deity concept alone nothing really changes, not for a believer and not for an atheist.

There are many Christians these days who don't even believe in deities but still have their church, rituals, theology and spirituality. The issues are not so much linked as commonly believed.

Where does the nihilist get his motivation to smash the 'tables'? Is he alone somehow cut off from the forces of conscience that he was initially controlled by? Would it not be relatively easy to argue that his supposed table smashing is merely the result of a certain type of tangled conscience too?

It could be argued some tangled conscience remains. It's simpler to see the last smash as ultimate consequence of the willingness toward truth. Not all nihilists are truth seekers though. One can have different motivations to smash the initial tables. Anger problems, fear, laziness or greed for example.

I understand(or more accurately often choose to use as a premise) that my actions are motivated by self-interest and probably largely imparted into me by my culture, but why would one then take the step to eradicate absolutely all their inherited conscience? There can be full understanding of the nature of conscience without this eradication step. Does Nietzsche propose eradicating it all, and what is his reasoning for doing so?

An answer to that would become a bit too involved. One has to define way more precise what conscience is and isn't before talking about eradicating anything. By the way, I didn't mean eradicating conscience, I was talking about damaged conscience, ie not truthful.

Diebert, are you a nihilist? Do you propose nihilism? I get the sense that you rather rarely propose solid statements of action or judgement.(I'm not saying that your lack of 'solidity' is why you might be a nihilist, rather, I am hoping for you to put forward a solid statement that in this case just happens to be about nihilism.)

Nihilism is a necessary evil. Not alone as sign of the times but also as more personal stage one goes through when we start to doubt everything we used to rely on. It can create a lot of uglyness and smallness, despair even perhaps. Or it can shut down the mind almost completely.

A solid statement of action or judgement. Ahum....: Hope! Act! Change!!

A work of Nietzsche that you might enjoy, Jason, though it is quite a piece of dynamite, is On the Genealogy of Morals. It is 3 medium-sized essays that can be read fairly quickly. The Oxford edition is my favorite.

Nietzsche noticed that in antiquity strong and valiant men just acted in their world. They came, they saw, they took. To be 'good' was to be powerful, rich, capable, self-empowered. Very much the values of warriors. Someone came along at some point---those pesky Jews according to Nietzsche---and attacked the previous value-system by calling it 'bad' and especially 'evil'. They put a different spin on 'good' and equated it will all those who suffered as the powerful man when a-ransacking. That whole value system is tied to a peculiar stance: ressentiment (resentment), and is the weak man's way of controlling and shaming the powerful man. The ultimate psychological punishment for this powerful, in the eyes of the powerless, is to hope-foresee that the powerful man will land in hell. A whole metaphysic arose to support the desire for revenge of the little man, which is Christian theology and 'ethics'. One of Nietzsche's ideas is that this powerful man, likely a noble, had a brother with too much time on his aristocratic hands, and so he spent his time forging a whole inner space for his culpability to flourish, his culpability-ressentiment against his powerful 'brother'. That person is the Priest.

Nietzsche noticed that if everyone really embodied the Christian ethics, all the achievements of old would no longer be possible. After all, the great gains of yore were achieved with no thought of the cost to the little people. For example establishing empires, ruling families, conquering new worlds, using stolen wealth to build cities and states, to get and achieve all that we now are (in respect to people who do not have, for example the Third World). The Christian ethic attacks all these attainments, and renders modern man a 'mediocre' man. A scared little rabbit, a fearful kneeling coward, who can take no giant strides in the world.

Nietzsche was appalled by that as an 'outcome' and proposes, in his very weird way, 'alternatives'. The bulk of that, as I understand it, was expressed in Thus Spake Zarathustra, but it is all expressed in symbolic language.

Jason wrote:

David Quinn wrote:The very fact that, in a godless universe, everyone is free to get away with whatever they want is precisely what makes having faith in truth so remarkable.

The person who has faith in truth knows very well that he is free to stop having faith in truth any time he wants and nothing will come of it. He will not be punished. He will not be held accountable. Indeed, he will probably prosper with the sudden freedom to indulge his egotistical whims. He knows that he can do this at a moment's notice and no one will probably ever know. Or care.

And yet if he resists this temptation and continues having faith in truth it will be because he genuinely values truth for its own sake - not as a means of gaining personal benefit in an afterlife, but because he believes that living truthfully is valuable in and of itself.

That doesn't really fully describe my experience of these things. In a godless universe a person's own conscience often takes over some of the functions that god may have otherwise handled. Living in a godless universe myself, I am my own judge, jury and executioner. My conscience tortures me if I act against its values, and striving for truth has been deeply implanted in my conscience - to intentionally stop striving for truth would be hard, maybe even impossible, for me to bear. There would be massive guilt, huge disappointment in myself, deep feelings of failure and so on.

That doesn't contradict what I said above. Holding yourself accountable is very different from looking externally to a God or to other people to hold you accountable. Brokenhead essentially believes that no one would have any reason to be responsible for their actions unless there was a God of some kind to hold you to account. This is a form of abandoning one's conscience.

But in saying what I said above, I was particularly focused on the situation of the spiritual person who is fully beyond the scope and limits of a creator God, who sees that there are no absolute values, no absolute right and wrong, no inherent significance to the valuing of truth, and no reason to value truth at all other than a personal determination to do so.

It is having faith in truth in such circumstances - when a life of blissful egotism and unconsciousness continually beckons in a seductive manner, when remaining in a relationship to truth continues to create a form of suffering and spiritual trial that only the conscious know about - which is so remarkable.

-

Brokenhead,

What a strangely unfriendly post. Perhaps you misunderstood something, or maybe you prefer only to argue with those who understand you not at all.

Was the crucifixion necessary? Of course not.

So how many Christians would say that? I extended the hand of friendship, admit you intrigue me in your views, maybe even a bit of a kindred spirit - whence the hostility?

The word "somehow" carries so much garbage that I do not have the patience to pick through it for you.

I'm trying but I can't see why the word somehow bothers you. I presume you are aware that almost all Christian theology hangs upon the notion that the crucifixion was necessary, the only way to please and appease God and various and sundry accoutrements.

Also, I am afraid it is a bit presumptuous of you to think that I need or am asking for your help in unraveling this, or in unloading my garbage. I am merely asking you how you have unraveled it, or have you.

If you "loathe" mainstream dogmas, you are putting yourself right in the cross-hairs of the garbage flow.

I suppose I can see what you mean, that one should not step down from equanimity or indulge in negative emotions. On the other hand, there's demons out there, Brokenhead. And while I walked away from Christianity years ago I find I have the desire to help a maiden in distress, held captive by the forces of darkness. It seems ungrateful to leave her entirely to her fate, she who has given me the pearl of great price. Should I discard her because I no longer need her? Should we let her be turned into a pillar of salt?

If I give you a simple homework assignment, would you do it?

Well again, it's a bit presumptuous of you to give me homework assignments when you hardly know me, but I'm curious as to what it might be. Perhaps something useful.

Oh, David, David, David.
There's lots of empirical evidence of a life after death, of a 'spiritual' world (for lack of a better term). You just pick and choose which evidence you want to see.

If a person is only going to assume responsibility for his relationship to truth on the proviso that he will not end at death, then he is not really having faith in truth.

One needs no responsibility toward truth to believe in a life after death of the body, furthermore, one can love truth even if the thought of death is horrifying. Truth needs no contingent reason for being desirable of pursuit.

The very fact that, in a godless universe, everyone is free to get away with whatever they want is precisely what makes having faith in truth so remarkable.

Aside from that being untrue, it gives me the sort of clue I look for (sometimes I openly ask but NEVER get an honest response) as to what satisfactions people get from atheism. They enjoy a stark and searing story, in this case you are the hero and superior to most others. But I do not think any of us are ultimately better than others, we are all completely equal, only unequal in our development and placement on the path to wisdom/God.

You can find other, better satisfactions.

[I might add that I also tremble at the thought of how many Christians have no desire for an uplifting cosmos and deity, but prefer the stark and searing story of a merciless egotist of a God and a universe of permanent unhealable misery. They don't want a good God or good news, they want drama, with high stakes and winners and losers.]

Again, the valuing of truth stands alone and it seems to me you have confused it with other people's notions that truth = some particular religion or moral stance.

Having faith in truth with no prospect of reward - that is amazing, out of this world.

It's a good point, but you are definitely kidding yourself if you think you do anything without seeking reward. Certainly not this. You have the reward of an exalted opinion of yourself, an amazing, out of this world person you are!

Brokenhead essentially believes that no one would have any reason to be responsible for their actions unless there was a God of some kind to hold you to account. This is a form of abandoning one's conscience.

Brokenhead, is it true?

Jason,

It would also seem to contradict the cynical and egoistic view prevalent around here that all actions are taken only because they in some way benefit and reward me.

So tell me when you have ever done anything that did not reward you?

David Quinn wrote:Brokenhead essentially believes that no one would have any reason to be responsible for their actions unless there was a God of some kind to hold you to account. This is a form of abandoning one's conscience.

Hey David, don't put words in my mouth. Do not say what I "essentially believe." You have no right to do that.

brokenhead wrote:

David Quinn wrote:Brokenhead essentially believes that no one would have any reason to be responsible for their actions unless there was a God of some kind to hold you to account. This is a form of abandoning one's conscience.

Hey David, don't put words in my mouth. Do not say what I "essentially believe." You have no right to do that.

The second sentence was my own comment. The first was a paraphrase of your own words:

The truth is that our physical bodies will die and cease forever to exist. Faith now comes into play, where ackowledged truth falls silent. What happens to us then? Do we as sentient beings also simply cease forever to exist? If so, then we have nothing to answer for in the here and now. So rather than, as average would have it, thinking that someone is taking the rap for our sins, no one is because no one has to. We can all be like OJ - if we can get away with it, everything is cool. Faith tells you that after death, not necessarily unceasingly, the soul continues on in some fashion. So faith mandates that not only you take responsibility for your actions "like a man," as average put it. A man is only answerable to other men. Faith mandates you take responsibility as a child of God.

Tell me how I've erred.


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