Pascal's Wager is brilliant!

I believe in an infinite number of intelligent different species in the universe. My argument is not anthropomorphic.

Also, this reveals more about you than me: you don’t want to be accountable towards any judgement or correct or incorrect or good or bad.

Every being that exists has one dignity that nobody can enslave or steal from them, much to your frustration, they can ask “is this violating my consent?”

You hate this.

What do you mean when you say ‘accountable’?

“if you wish to converse with me, define your terms” - voltaire

Sure, your fear, specifically, of “accountability” is that you might be under responsibility to “owe something”

There’s your definition.

You are even terrified of feeling bad if you are wrong about something, so you just want no accountability to anything whatsoever. You couch this fear as you being a nihilistic badass.

Yo max, handle this one for me, chief…

“Where the world comes in my way—and it comes in my way everywhere—I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but—my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility, of use. We owe each other nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of consequence to me, and my air serves my wish; to a thousand others, whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not show it.”

This quote gives me only the impression that this guy thinks he’s god or something.

What I’m talking about in terms of “owe”, is crime and punishment in a reality that isn’t ideal.

If you are caught murdering someone here, that’s 25 to life, that’s what you owe.

Likewise, should you commit the crime of contradiction and you are caught, you owe feeling bad and an apology.

That’s what I mean by accountable.

I’m sorry… a ‘god’? Oh heavens no, good sir! Max was something immeasurably greater than a ‘god’. He was… (wait for it)… the creative nothing.

Here’s a translation you won’t read when you see how long it is. Don’t sweat it, bro. It’s a humorously polemical departure from philosophy that need not be read.

theanarchistlibrary.org/library … s-property

I read enough to know he has a god complex.

Shakespeare said it best, “thou doth protest too much”

The reveal was when he made the theistic argument that without god, everything is just absurd."

Only people with God complexes make this argument.

Stirner, nor you, nor anyone can state that my axiom “nobody wants their consent violated”. Is false.

It’s counter definitional for one.

That, not “anarchism”, is what really gives power to the people, and like you, stirner hates that.

That a person can be their own judge of reality.

He’s also not a logitician, no truth is stating a truth, set acting upon itself as a contradiction.

You see, humans for mating privileges use contradiction to show their WEALTH!!! To get women into bed…

That’s all your towering intellect is here, a 19th century dickhead. That’s called real philosophy.

Do you see what you are doing here? You are trying to take away one’s individual free choice when it comes to what we find to be meaningful and valuable in life. True, for many people, their God gives the most meaning, especially if they live in accordance with God’s laws but there are multitudinous things in life which we experience which give us meaning, and more meaning. We are all individuals who have had different journeys along the way. How could we all feel and respond the same way? We are not the Borg!

I wonder what your God thinks about the atheist who because he cannot fathom a God and a life after death, sets out to do so much good in this world because he thinks" "Well, this is all there is so I will make my life count for something. He serves humanity in a far better way than many so-called “good” people do.

William James said that the greatest use of life was to spend it for something which would outlast it. I do not think that he meant that we ought to make God an opiate or ourselves torquemadas.

FreeSpirit1983

Starting?

If something comes as a result of evidence, then there is no need for faith. It is knowledge since it has been proven.

:-k If he believes in grace, then perhaps he is not such an atheist as one would believe. Anyway, I would sooner take a pantheist over some believers because their feelings and experiences (the pantheists’) of the universe and nature come closer to the kind of awe and reverence and mystery which I experience. Perhaps I am a pantheistic agnostic. lol

I cannot say one way or the other if there was truly a Jesus who lived, an historical figure. Historians may believe that it is possible but they sometimes lie or do not get the facts right. Has it actually been proven?

I wonder how that would hold up in court, FreeSpirit. What evidence? You do realize that eyewitnesses sometimes get it wrong. They miss a lot, and they sometimes see what it is that they want to see.
How can one possibly prove that a man was literally the Son of God? You do realize that people are not beyond the Lie in order to get something started, founded, because to them it would be part of the greater good, to bring forth a more loving, compassionate, humane world.

Some things in science are rational to believe and then one goes forward to prove that.
Yes, it probably is a rational thing to believe that there can be Something which began all of this based on the evidence around us (though we cannot really prove it) but that does not specifically point to Catholic/Christian doctrine as being “real”.

Where does an agnostic like me? Limbo? :evilfun:

You have every right to your beliefs — they are your subjective beliefs for whatever reason — but do you have the right to insult people so casually for their disbeliefs, for their way of thinking differently, simply because they conflict with yours? Do you have the right to condemn them to a hell because their hearts and minds experience things differently than yours?

I am only paraphrasing here but Carl Jung has said that we become in time what we fight the most. I would add “internally” to that. Psychologically speaking it makes sense. The suppressed and repressed things which we do not bring to our consciousness will eventually take their hold on us. Many of us have learned that.

Do you ever take the time to see what a beautiful universe has been created? I am not saying that you do not. Do you see that, do you experience that, or do you just cut to the chase and see only the one who you believe created it, missing it all and all of its meaning?

I wish I knew how to respond, as you did, line by line :smiley:

I recommend you read this book. It goes into the evidence. You can get it for dirt cheap.

amazon.com/Case-Christ-Jour … 0310209307

A good tactic would be to ask someone how. You click on quote, as you have already done, on their post. When it comes up you can mark any portion of their text by holding the left button down on the mouse and selecting text. The at the top of you draft you will see symbols B, i and u

and then Quote.

click on quote and the marked areas will now have the instructions for making a quote. You can get into trouble if you have too many of one of the instructions. But that’s a good start.

This is fine as an addition in a response, but it’s not really a response. It’s a philosophy discussion forum. Which means that points made should ideally be responded to in clear ways. You wrote X, and I think that X is not the case because…or is the case because…and this leads us to believe Y. Direct responses to specific points.

If someone wants to go online and find out books on by people who believe X, they can find much easier and direct routes themselves. So, it’s a fine addition but it’s not a philosophical response.

Freespirit!

“Our father who is in heaven…”

“I and the father are one”

“Hate your father”

=

Hate me.

This is an exact message Jesus gave that solves as “hate me”.

Of course we know that Jesus also says to love your enemies.

What we really have here are about 5 contradictions when you get into the verse about “say anything against the father and I, but not the Holy Spirit”

So many intertwining contradictions there.

Jesus admits that his father sins “the splinter in my eye, I and the father are one”. And instructs us to “Be perfect like your father is perfect”

What you can at BEST say about Jesus in the Bible is that there are too many contradictions about EXTREMELY important theological stances, these contradictions don’t by any stretch of the imagination PROVE that the Bible is true!! As apologists argue.

Free Spirit,

This can then make you happy as there will be far less people in heaven with you. There you will not be outnumbered and you will be :banana-dance:

That is a very nice smile there after your quote. Perhaps it is kind of a Freudian slip? Perhaps you feel very happy within these trenches or at the least, they give your life meaning. :evilfun:

I don’t want anyone NOT to get to heaven because the alternative is really bad.

It is a LITTLE fun being counter cultural.

When I mention I’m Christian on many forums, I get brutally attacked by people.

And that’s not really fair. I think we get that. But, we do know where that comes from. Christianity has a pretty horrific history, so when someone says without detail that they are in that tradition, some significant number of people are going to feel this being a Christian is a tacit acceptance of that history or a perhaps not caring.

In a way saying one is a Christian gives very little information, so they should be cautious. What Christians believe runs an enormous range of possibilities. From deist versions, to Quaker type versions, to violent fundmantalisms, to people who take Jesus as a great teacher, as the sun of God, as the whole thing is a metaphor.

And there are many who could not believe that someone who could think that a loving God puts people in Hell for all time, could on some levels not also be hateful while presenting themselves as loving.

There is so much baggage around the major religions. And there is so much that being a Christian might mean that to many people is terrible.

[/quote]
And that’s not really fair. I think we get that. But, we do know where that comes from. Christianity has a pretty horrific history, so when someone says without detail that they are in that tradition, some significant number of people are going to feel this being a Christian is a tacit acceptance of that history or a perhaps not caring.

In a way saying one is a Christian gives very little information, so they should be cautious. What Christians believe runs an enormous range of possibilities. From deist versions, to Quaker type versions, to violent fundmantalisms, to people who take Jesus as a great teacher, as the sun of God, as the whole thing is a metaphor.

And there are many who could not believe that someone who could think that a loving God puts people in Hell for all time, could on some levels not also be hateful while presenting themselves as loving.

There is so much baggage around the major religions. And there is so much that being a Christian might mean that to many people is terrible.
[/quote]
That’s because people only judge Christianity by its abuses these days.

people judge it in all sorts of ways. Some judge it just by its postive side and can’t admit any problems now or then. And a whole range in between.

Not in modern day America.

The news coverage and culture is almost entirely negative.

I find that a bit hard to believe since a Presidential candidate who was not a Christian would stand almost not the slightest chance of winning. I suppose that could be an apples oranges kind of analysis on my part. How did you determine that most coverage of Chrisitianity is negative. Do they write about Christianity as a whole regularly in the media?

Yes.

Just do a Google news and put the word “Catholic” or “Christian.”

The news coverage is almost entirely negative. The media constantly brings up the sex abuse scandal, even though less than 5% of Catholic clergy were ever involved and it’s plummeted since 2002 because of the Dallas Charter reforms, for example.

The West only judges religion by it’s abuses.