Not owning up to your part in a long-running situation that got out of hand… such an un-religious thing to do… no conscience, no ownership-of-accountability, all blame/no shame: on being the instigator of the situation… leading to a lack of valour/of societal morals/of showing good face etc. etc. etc.
Oh how the mud-flinger cries, when mud is flung back at him.
Before …are you sure about that? are you sure you’re not still there…?
I think it is Iam’s intensity of inquiry, that makes him/would make anyone, come off as creepy. Perhaps he’s a Scorpio?
Just like many here… getting kicks for free, off the situation? as I cannot see any other reason for it, for the situation to have come into existence in the first place.
…but that’s not what philosophy is… trying to fix people, attacking the person instead and not the person’s argument. You think they would know this by now and not do it… it’s such a feminine thing to do, a mothering instinct that they cannot help but have.
This idea of the one true path which Iambiguous raised with Bob reminded me of the quest of the Holy Grail. The knights entered the forest at the point that they had chosen where there was no path. If there was a path it was someone else’s path and if you took it you would not be on the adventure.
What then are you to do about instruction? You can get clues from people who have followed paths but then you have to veer off that and translate it into your own decision and there is no book of rules that applies to the path you create with every step. If a knight going his own way finds the path of another he might think he’s getting there but if he follows that path he goes totally astray.
For the goal is the fulfillment of something that never was on Earth before namely the realization of one’s own potentiality. Such is the goal of individuation–the path of no path.
There is a story in the NT in which Jesus speaks of the crooked path that few find, which may be the origin of such an idea, but the idea that you must leave the well-trodden path to individuate is new to me. I always thought that following the trail that others leave was the normal way of growing up, until I started seeing things that I realised I was seeing differently to how others saw them. I then started using elders more as a negative example, who showed me how not to do something.
Of course, a knight is a very idealistic person, and the grail the highest ideal. I sometimes wonder whether they were an example for all, or just particular people. The hero’s journey is probably a large part of it, and although my life was always an adventure to me, I was seldom the hero.
When Jesus went forth to preach his sermons, it was others that asked him whom he was… a king… the king of kings… a holy man… a mad man… a saint… a sinner… a prophet… the son of god… god?
Did he say he was any of those things?
Perhaps a lot of what he said was said in jest, and so he got persecuted because of it… was he not joined by many men on those crucifixion crosses, for unacceptable blasphemies against the State, for believing in a one true god?
…as thorny as the thorns, that were fashioned into a crown, and placed on Jesus’ head? The issue is only a thorny one in your mind… it isn’t in my mind or others’ minds, here, so you have given yourself a monumental mental-task in making it so.
We do not often choose our god, like we choose our weapons, as we either inherit them or [insert your reason here].
Throughout the period of the German occupation they systematically terrorized, murdered and tortured by means of shooting, hanging, gassing, starvation, gross over crowding, systematic under nutrition, labor tasks beyond the strength of those ordered to carry them out, not to mention surgical and medical procedures, kickings, beatings, torture of all kinds. It was deliberate and systematic genocide in order to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles and Gypsies and others,
all this and your Pope had full knowledge of what was happening and did nothing.
Watch The Holocaust | USC Shoah Foundation and learn about some of the survivors testimonies and their bravery and the sacrifices they made.
What on earth is that supposed to mean? Let them note contexts relating to the subjects being discussed on this thread, and describe more fully what it means to use silence and solitude wisely.
Give it a shot yourself.
Okay, but, in my view, the main reason that many come to philosophy venues is in order to discuss those part of their lives that revolve around meaning and purpose. With or without God. Moving in towards those experiences that they have had that prompted them to go there in the first place.
There are plenty of venues both online and offline where one can go to pursue an interest in music and poetry and the night sky. Hardly any at all for what we do here. And look what ILP has turned into! I’m just more inclined to bring the words out into the world when the discussions revolve around moral and political and spiritual values.
We’ll need a context here too. How might this frame of mind be applicable in the abortion wars? If he were here at ILP today, what might he say?
Conflicts of this sort often revolve around capitalism vs. socialism. Or the Me, myself and I mentality – “show me the money” – vs. “we the people” striving for the greater good of all.
But, again, how are individual narratives here not profoundly rooted existentially in dasein? And “spiritually” what is the One True Path for resolving conflicts of this sort?
I know that any number of folks here will cringe, but: we’ll need a context of course.
And how does this not revolve around the assumptions that individuals make regarding these exceptions? And how is that not the embodiment of dasein? You as an individual either have more compassion for the healthy fetus or for the parents who will encounter serious problems if the fetus is born. One or the other. You can’t have both.
It’s like with the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict. Some feel greater compassion for him, others for the people he killed. And how is that not rooted in political prejudices rooted in dasein? Spiritually, is there an optimal measure of compassion that those like the Dalai Lama can weigh in with?
And, indeed, to the extent that “I” becomes fractured and fragmented, a black and white world is the last thing you experience.
Exactly, different experiences yield different spiritual/religious conclusions.
But, for any number of Christians in all of the many different denominations, with Judgment Day itself on the line, you push the dispute to the point where you either go up or down. And that seems no less obvious to them. Only, again, with all of this at stake, what’s a mere mortal to choose? We certainly have nothing more concrete from God to fall back on here.
Again and again and again: with so much at stake on both sides of the grave, the only demonstration that would suffice is one that made it absolutely clear which One True Path you had better be on.
One thing that we do know considerably more about is this: we all die. And one option here seems to be oblivion. And that truly disturbs – even terrifies – many. Which, of course, is why “the Gods” or “a God, the God, my God” were/are/will be invented over and over and over again. With a leap of faith to them not only is oblivion discarded altogether but in its place is Heaven or Nirvana itself.
No, it’s what, existentially, you have come to believe that you think you know about him. Either through indoctrination as a child or along a particular path out in a particular world understood in a particular way.
Okay, but how does that really pertain to this part:
Isn’t it important for those considering the Christian faith to be clear about all of this? What does it mean to accept Jesus Christ as your own personal savior when there is all this ambiguity and confusion regarding Him and the life He lived.
Especially given that there are other communities who worship and adore the God of Moses and Abraham who insist that Jesus Christ is not a part of their religion at all.
Not if Judgment Day itself is the real deal. There what’s in your mind translated into the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave can have staggering consequences. And for all of eternity no less.
Jesus never called himself God, or the Son Of God, but he did call himself The Son Of Man, so as not to be blasphemous to His god… but he was still found blasphemous for his teachings regardless, betrayed by some of his followers, then eventually arrested and put to death.
There’s comfort, for him and his family and friends, in the thought that His death would not be permanent… so taken out of context as to what he truly meant, which was to not let his loved-ones grieve for him.
Isn’t that for the individual to ascertain? what are they, stupid?
There would have been a lot of death and disease around at that time, so how do you soothe the dying… by telling them that they will have eternal life, after death. Vikings have Valhalla, the East… reincarnation, the Japanese… fatalism.
Religion, the great divider… Judaism and Christianity, Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy… Catholicism and Puritanism, and so on… into the more recent religions and faiths.
__
Just out of interest:
Some consider devotion to Mary a harmless Catholic quirk. Others consider it proof that Catholics worship multiple gods. They point to statues of Mary in Catholic churches and Catholics praying the Hail Mary as indisputable evidence of idolatry, blasphemy or other heresies.
…and let’s not forget about the multitude of Saints that Catholics pray to, too.
Yes, but not everyone has the same dilemma or thoughts, about life death and dying… I never think about it, not even when my intolerances have brought me close to the brink of it… but I don’t know why I don’t.
The message seems to be… your life is currently crap, but after death you can live an eternal better one, sitting on the right-hand-side of God our Father in Heaven.
I somehow thought that, when you get bored, you would return to this
Again, you don’t seem to have grasped it. Leaving your troubled ego at the door, even if it is still knocking, and listening to silence, slowly allowing the thoughts to pass; or perhaps dissolving into a tune, taken up in an ecstatic intercourse with the music; or breathing in the sea air on a shore, surrounded by the wind, the spray, and the sound of waves pounding. Whatever way you find of going beyond yourself, of finding a refuge from the bustle of everyday engagement, it refreshes the mind.
Strange, you don’t seem to be able to envisage the meaning and purpose that is served by silence and solitude. You, and others, seem to divide the world up. Reality is for you a series of compartments, which we enter at choice, entertaining aspects of life separately, but failing to take the wonder of the larger picture into consideration. Yes, we can consider the particulars of a certain argument, but we need to return to the larger whole. That is why you remain stuck in revolving discussions, never satisfied that someone may have found their answer, because you haven’t.
Resolving issues, settling a dispute in the way they present themselves is a challenge to anyone. The idealist probably feels betrayed or misunderstood, but often it is a case of losing a battle and continuing the struggle. The spiritual aspect is the frame of mind we go through these struggles, and whether we see our defeat as a personal loss, or just a sign of the times.
I don’t see the problem you are alluding to. We are confronted with these choices every day, and the world consists of opposites which depend on each other. The matter of abortion is just a case in which we have to be clear in what we are doing, and act as best we can in the circumstances. We have to consider as many aspects as we can, in order to make a decision we can live with.
If you sit back and consider these things, you come to see where a process begins, and where the events you don’t want to happen start. In the case of Rittenhouse, it seems to me to start with leaving the house with a loaded gun as a juvenile and travelling to an area where emotions are clouding judgement. The result is that people are killed. He took it for granted that he could end up killing people, so he at least intended, given the right circumstances, to use his gun.
Okay, my demonstration is the way I live my life.
Oblivion is just that. The worse part of a bad experience is the experience, but in oblivion there is no experience. It is like a dreamless sleep. If that is what you are expecting, okay, where’s the problem?
If you are expecting to be confronted with your mistakes and held to account for them, that could be a harrowing experience. I would start thinking about how I intend to plead.
If you are looking to connect the dots between morality here and now and immortality there and then given that most who worship and adore the God of Moses and Abraham believe in one or another rendition of Judgment Day, isn’t it rather important that it actually be established and then demonstrated what the relationship is between them? Also, that since others who claim this God as their own deny that Christ is a part of their own Scriptures, that this be pinned down definitively as well?
Why your own subjective take on all of this and not theirs? Again, with so much at stake.
What there is comfort in here is being able to think yourself into believing that what you were indoctrinated by others to believe, or what you have come to believe yourself, is the ticket to Paradise.
And who gets to lay claim on the only context that counts when push comes to shove and you are deciding if the behaviors that you choose might well be judged as Sins by God. Is God partial to the moral and political agendas of conservatives or liberals?
And that’s before we get to all of the other Gods out there that are worshipped and adored around the globe.
Thus, again…
Yes, but my point here is that as individuals, our religous convictions or lack thereof are rooted existentially in dasein. After all, think of all those millions and millions and millions of men and women who were born in a historical or cultural context in which the tales of the Christian God and Jesus Christ might just as well have been gibberish.
The point isn’t about calling someone or another stupid, but recognizing that for many, ignorance and stupidity itself revolve precisely around all those who don’t think exactly as they do about God and religion.
And why shouldn’t they embrace an orthodox or a fundamentalist religious dogma? Again: the stakes!!!
Of course that just brings us to squaring this alleged loving, just and merciful God with “a lot of death and disease”. And, yes, you tell them to worship and adore your own God precisely because without Him human pain and suffering become essentially meaningless and purposeless. In other words, God as the mother of all psychological defense mechanisms.
How about this: dasein.
You lived a particular life and had particular experiences and relationships and access to information and knowledge that merely predisposed you to think as you do about God and religion.
Here and now.
On the other hand, given new experiences, relationships, etc., you might find yourself in here one day defending atheism instead.
Sorry folks, but this whole forum suffers the kind from the same kind of reduction, not really to absurdity, but from the repellent tenacity to resist only one thing:
That Jesus maybe was a more acute observer to avoid speaking in down to earth common language, with severely bounded limited appeal, instead, the parables, understood through the ends of time echo them, which no one can withstand from it’s effecting power.
The loving of enemies is the severest slap in the face that any kind of emphatic can certainly use to offer the other cheek.
Thag the existence of the humanness of such expresdion, was always embraced, and Christ The King, when asked by Pilote if he was king of the jees, in fact answered him, saying "My Kingdom is not of this earth, "
What shallow argument can undermine 2 thousand years of a message of goidwill, that trivializes and restructures to a one dimensional autracity, the message which gave hope, love and brotherhood to many hundreds of believers since.
It really makes little sense to use convincing platitudes where they are restructured and admittedly fractured themself, to recognize the will of God as a whole,
From here looked into the question, the Power to Will, for the idiot would be manifold multiplied, crucified all over again, the Son of Man,sheds light,and makes sense., for.For. Zossima’s existential reply to the question of why Christ shouldn’t return.
Is Egyptian magic to be considered in Jesus determinately short life?
“Son of an Israelite Woman and an Egyptian Man”—Jesus as the Blasphemer (Lev 24:10–23): An Anti-Gospel Polemic in the Zohar *
Published online by Cambridge University”
(All things considered, to be tied together in some afterthought)
I didn’t realise that religion was a dictatorship. The objectives of a religion, becomes subjective through its dissemination, so becoming an internal personal matter to the Individual.
Religion is about living a certain way of life… different religions around the world for different folks, having its origins in ancestor worship, so a religion/belief denoting a Peoples and their origins.
Religion, the great divider… of differences and grievances, that has brought the World to its current state of being.
“God as the mother of all psychological defense mechanisms”.
…but so are parents, peers, experiences, of which religion is another facet of that amalgamation.
You obviously see religion different to most… your life’s-amalgamation of the totality of your experiences is the factor for that.
I experienced an experience that made me question god… religion… everything, already. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
