The world, with its ugliness and evil, does not disappear when one goes to heaven — Thorongil

In death, if the last stage near shutdown is reached, at the end of lives, the world (with its ugliness & "evil"), the body, identity, events and time disappear, along with the knowledge that there ever were such things.

Maybe that Timelessness then, at the end of lives, could be called Eternity, and you could word that, in terms of your own religion, as heaven.

But when it's reached, there's no world, or any hint that there ever was one.

By the way, Hinduism, and probably Buddhism too, suggest that, near the beginning of death, well before shutdown has eliminated identity, time, etc., there are temporary heavens (for some people) and temporary hells (for other people) ...something quite distinct from the Eternity at the end of lives.

(...the end of lives being reached only by a very few most fully life-experienced and life-completed people)

If that's so, I don't have an explanation for it.except that it sounds similar to the NDEs at the very beginning of death.

Michael Ossipoff

"I don't know what you're including under atrocities, but I find many of them attributed to the Church to be overblown. A lot of anti-Catholic myths surround things like the Crusades and the Inquisition, for example.

I agree with you about the liturgy, though. The Catholic Church, in the false "spirit of Vatican II" almost succeeded in selling its birthright for a mess of pottage when it comes to the Mass. Benedict XVI has been influential in reviving the Latin form of it, though, so I hope it continues its comeback. Or at least, I hope the Ordinary Form can become more solemn and reverent."

The two worst atrocities IMO is the corruption that occured in the Church that still led to the reformation. I am not Pro Luther, but I do understand that he had a Point when he said the Church was corrupted. The other of the two worst atrocities is how it before used the threat of eternal damnation and painted up vivid and horrible pictures of what hell was (the physical torture there etc.) that caused poor uneducated people in that time to be terrorized by fear and horror over the idea that they would end up there. And why did they threat People like this? To gain and keep Control over the masses, by causing them, the fearful, sensitive and uneducated ones, to submit to The Church. All about power.

that caused poor uneducated people in that time to be terrorized by fear and horror over the idea that they would end up there — Beebert

Do we really know this, though, or are we simply projecting what we think they would have thought onto them?

To gain and keep Control over the masses, by causing them, the fearful, sensitive and uneducated ones, to submit to The Church. All about power. — Beebert

Well, was there any alternative? Civilization basically collapsed when the Western Roman Empire collapsed, so don't underestimate the level of destitution and illiteracy this caused in Europe. It took monks many months just to copy a single book, if they weren't slaughtered and their books burned in a Viking raid, that is. Moreover, these "fearful, sensitive, and uneducated masses" voluntarily became Christians in most cases when missionaries came to their lands, so whatever control the Church exercised over them was already consented to by them. They also made up the Church, in that they built the churches, cathedrals, and monasteries, while their children became monks, nuns, and priests.

There seems to be no doubt to me that the Church threatened people for wrong reasons. You also have the reasons That caused Luther to rebel...

Anyway, there are other concerns; the theological differences between East and West, where the East have been more faithful to a mystical understanding of things and to theologians like Gregory of Nyssa and Maximos the Confessor... In the Western view it is often said that in Adam we all sinned. In the Orthodox understanding however, original sin is not about an inherited guilt. It is instead about the consequences of living in a world that now is sinful. Because of that difference the Orthodox understand sin not in terms of transgression and penalty, as the catholics are more inclined to do, but rather in the terms of bondage and sickness. I believe that this is a healthier way to approach what both east and west are trying to describe. Because of that, the east's understanding of what salvation is, is transformative rather than judicial. The real object of salvation is God bringing about an inner change in us. The Atonement is about recapitulation, rather than appeasement. In the words of Ephesians 1:10, “God’s purpose is, in the fulness of the times, to sum up,” or recapitulate, “all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth…” The need for Atonement is not a need to satisfy God’s wrathful desire to punish, but rather the need for Atonement is the need to recreate in us the image of God that we had lost because of our loss of communion with Him, and to free us from our bent toward sin...

And when God intervenes in nature and does something we judge, by the moral law he gave us, to be evil, then what? — Thorongil

If God causes the event directly, then it would be beyond good and evil.

A straw man. It's not lifted above, but made to be identical with God himself. God is not merely good, he is goodness itself. — Thorongil

Hmm okay, so then where does evil come from? Evil exists eternally like some kind of absence?

Do you reject the doctrine of divine simplicity? — Thorongil

No. God's transcendence would imply that doctrine.

I still don't get the relevance. Are you saying that the repugnant things are suddenly no longer repugnant once sin goes away? Ugly and evil things just disappear? That would be an interesting claim to the extent that it suggests you are an annihilationist. — Thorongil

The relevance is that you would then not use the Law to judge God's actions. Using the Law to judge God is an effect of sin, or so would be my claim.

It seems that God's "glory" is always appealed to when trying to smooth over theologically absurd or morally repellent claims. — Thorongil

Is morality defined by God's Law? Is God the Creator of the Law? Presuming you've answered these two by yes, then it would follow that God - as Creator of the Law - cannot be judged using the Law. So how is this theologically absurd?

I made an analogy between a father and his child. Do you reject that God is a father and that we are his children? It seems you must do so in order to say that my analogy is "fallacious." — Thorongil

God is in many ways like a Father, but He's also different from your earthly father.

Now you're saying that God can't break his law, after you've just beaten me over the head with the claim that God can do what he wants, because he's above and beyond the law? Tell me how you have not just contradicted yourself here. — Thorongil

Because whatsoever God does, it wouldn't count as breaking the Law - precisely because God is above the Law, and thus not subject to it. By not being subject to the Law, there is no sense in which you could say that God would break it.

Alright, so then anti-natalism follows. Why create more humans corrupted by the fall? You're just perpetuating the fall and its corruption indefinitely. — Thorongil

In the sense of St. Augustine's statement, it might (although I'm not ready to go there).

Google "The Council of Nicea", to read about what I'm talking about.

No one even tries to deny, for example, that a significant number of books were removed from the Bible at Nicea, because they didn't suit the Bishops' &/or the Emperor's agenda

Search Google for James McGrath's completely objective review of Bart Ehrman's Forged: Writing for God

Also, google Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus.

Forgery was rampant in the Bible. McGrath says that most scholars would agree with that. It's well-accepted that about half of the books in the New Testament weren't written by the person to whom they're attributed.

Ehrman is quoted as saying, "The New Testament wasn't written by God. It has human fingerprints all over its pages." But wasn't that obvious to all of us?

Didn't you get the impression that there was something fishy, when the Gospels keep quoting Christ as saying things to the effect of "Believe on me, or else". Does that sound like something that Jesus would say?

And the Old Testament's "wrathful God" was just the product of some wrathful writers.

Acts 4:13 says that Peter and John were illiterate. But, later, books of the Bible are attributed to them as the authors.

It's said, and McGrath seems to agree, that only about half of what was attributed to Paul was really written by Paul.

Paul's forgers contradicted eachother regarding his position on women's participation in the church.

By the way, quashing the notion of women having participation or status in the church was one of the agendas at the Council of Nicea.

In the first few centuries of Christianity, there were about 100 forgeries written in the name of members of Jesus' inner-circle.

If someone wanted to say or promote something, what better way than to attribute it to someone famous.

Such rampant lying is unbecoming for a book claiming to be the Truth.

Does anyone really believe that God wrote the Bible?

Another thing:

I don't usually get an opportunity to talk to a Biblical literalist. Don't take offense when I express disagreement with that position.

...But, don't you see that you're having faith in a bunch of writers? Is that what religious faith should be?

There's no reason why faith in God should mean faith in a bunch of writers who claim to be speaking for God.

Do you see the difference? It isn't the same thing.

You asked why authoritarian authors would have a motive to attribute heinous orders to God.

You've got to be kidding.

Say you want to do something heinous. Say you want to say that God is on your side, and told you to do it, and told other people to support it. Then you'd be strongly motivated to invent a God who gives heinous orders.

And the Abraham murder-order story makes no sense. Why would God give such an order, to murder a child who hadn't done anything to anyone, other than a test of Abraham's obedience to carry out even the most heinous act?

Maybe you believe in such a God. That, and the Canaan massacre-orders that you believe that God issued, wouldn't come from God.

Oh yes, the justification for that belief is always, a statement that God's ways are mysterious. That's being used as a convenient cover, for the most obviously-wrong claims about what God has ordered.

I'm certainly not saying that God is explainable. But when we're told that God ordered something obviously, blltantly heinous, the obvious and simple explanation is that someone is lying.

You said that I'm motivated to promote anti-Church propaganda. Look, do you think that the Church needs me to discredit it? It does that eminently well on its own.

For example, when the Church charges admission to heaven, by running the scam of taking money to help someone get into heaven.

For example, by the disproportionate number of pedophiles in the priesthood. ...and pedophile-enablers in the Church administrative hierarchy.

etc., etc.

Michael Ossipoff

Well, was there any alternative? Civilization basically collapsed when the Western Roman Empire collapsed, so don't underestimate the level of destitution and illiteracy this caused in Europe. — Thorongil

David Bentley Hart's book Atheist Delusions is a salutary reminder of the revolutionary nature of Christianity in the formation of Europe - ' bringing liberation from fatalism, conferring great dignity on human beings, subverting the cruelest aspects of pagan society, and elevating charity above all virtues. He then argues that what we term the “Age of Reason” was in fact the beginning of the eclipse of reason’s authority as a cultural value.'

so then where does evil come from? Evil exists eternally like some kind of absence? — Agustino

Evil arises from ignorance, which is mainly, or even only, wanting the wrong things! When I say 'evil has no real existence', what I mean is that evil has no being, there is nothing that is intrinsically evil.

(The crucial point is, that without the 'chain of being', no theological philosophy makes sense. The chain of being allows for different levels of reality, whereby things that are real on one level, are unreal on another. So things both do and do not exist, and both are and are not real, depending on the perspective from which they're being seen. This is precisely the understanding which was collapsed by later Medieval scholasticism, hence the never-ending quandaries and contradictions in "modern" thought.)

In ancient philosophy, 'being' was itself a kind of a virtue (an intuition which is preserved in the ontological arguments.) So what 'truly is', were the various kinds of substance, (or, better, ouisia, which is nearer to 'being' than 'substance'.) So 'being' was overall good, 'non-being' or nothingness was an imperfection; this is the idea behind the 'pleroma' (which is still part of Greek Christianity and also gnosticism).

So, in this understanding, evil comes about because humans don't properly understand, cherish, be grateful for, what is*. They are driven by their own sense of lack or incompleteness to seek fulfilment in all kinds of spurious, imaginary or fantastic ends and means, which can develop into quite astonishingly elaborate forms, even institutionalised violence and tyranny. And that is where evil 'comes from'.

whatsoever God does, it wouldn't count as breaking the Law - precisely because God is above the Law, and thus not subject to it. By not being subject to the Law, there is no sense in which you could say that God would break it. — Agustino

This is actually a very dangerous thing to believe, in my opinion - because if this is so, 'God' is also above any form of predication - we can't even say that God is 'good' or 'just', because, according to this, God's ideas of 'goodness' and 'justice' could be utterly capricious; He might decided that what we think is evil, is good, just because He can.

---------------

* That is why, in Buddhist philosophy, 'seeing what is' (Yathābhūtaṃ) is one of the virtues of the Buddha; whereas for the "modern" person, 'what is', is essentially meaningless.

"This is actually a very dangerous thing to believe, in my opinion - because if this is so, 'God' is also above any form of predication - we can't even say that God is 'good' or 'just', because, according to this, God's ideas of 'goodness' and 'justice' could be utterly capricious; He might decided that what we think is evil, is good, just because He can."

This understanding of God is exactly what caused me to be hospitalized for a month a year ago.

If God causes the event directly, then it would be beyond good and evil. — Agustino

Poppycock. This is to say that evil is not evil.

Hmm okay, so then where does evil come from? Evil exists eternally like some kind of absence? — Agustino

This returns us to your original argument, which I only granted for the sake of argument. I suppose the response to your question would be that you are mistaken to speak of evil as existing. That is to say, if you grant that evil is the privation of the good, and it is the case that the good alone exists (God), then evil does not exist. God cannot by definition be present where nothing exists, so the contradiction you thought resulted doesn't actually do so.

No. God's transcendence would imply that doctrine. — Agustino

But as I said, the doctrine also entails that God is goodness, however analogical this claim may be. To enact a complete divorce between goodness and God is not something I've ever seen a traditional Christian theist do.

Using the Law to judge God is an effect of sin, or so would be my claim. — Agustino

I'm still uncomfortable with this, as it seems to imply a kind of moral relativism, which would suggest, for example, that there are instances when murder is right. But for God to command murder at one time and condemn it at another offends our moral sensibilities. Murder is intrinsically wrong, no matter the circumstances, which means that its being wrong cannot change. I would rather revise my conception of God and my understanding of those passages of scripture wherein he seems to command murder, than admit that murder is sometimes right.

Is morality defined by God's Law? Is God the Creator of the Law? Presuming you've answered these two by yes, then it would follow that God - as Creator of the Law - cannot be judged using the Law. So how is this theologically absurd? — Agustino

Not univocally, no.

God is in many ways like a Father, but He's also different from your earthly father. — Agustino

Right, so my analogy isn't fallacious.

Because whatsoever God does, it wouldn't count as breaking the Law - precisely because God is above the Law, and thus not subject to it. By not being subject to the Law, there is no sense in which you could say that God would break it. — Agustino

As I said above in this post, this is not the sense in which God cannot break it. You say that he can break it because he is utterly beyond it. I say that God cannot break the law, because the object of the law is the good, so to break it would be to violate his own nature as goodness itself.

In the sense of St. Augustine's statement, it might (although I'm not ready to go there). — Agustino

I admittedly threw you a slightly off-topic bone here, but this is an interesting response. You don't have to respond in this thread, but what exactly is your view on procreation? I might have mistakenly believed you were an anti-natalist at one point.

This is exactly the view of God that caused me to be hospitalized for a month a year ago. — Beebert

Are you being serious?

Yes

Yes — Beebert

Damn. I'm sorry that happened. I guess it goes to show that ideas have consequences, as Richard Weaver would say, sometimes physically deleterious ones.

I am serious. It was horrible and I guess I am glad that things didnt get worse. That is partly Why some of agustino's views have made me react. Perhaps(probably) I was deluded, but the suffering of believing that God is a capricious, unpredictable(this one is important) all-mighty, calvinistic-ish tyrant was beyond what you can imagine. That is also why I now detest the idea of etetnal hell; but more, that is Why I reacted against agustino's view that one shall delight in the fact that people are punished forever for their sins and accept that one might go to hell because God CAN'T be questioned. At least this was the impression he gave me But I probably over-reacted.

At least this was the impression he gave me But I probably over-reacted. — Beebert

I don't think he's out of the woods yet, as I too detect something similar to what you do in him.

But yes. I have experienced hell . The despair that I felt from feeling absolutely certain that my life was over, that I had no more Hope, that all I had to do was to wait for my everlasting torture in a Fire after death is the worst psychological torture you can experience. I am 100 percent sure of that.

Seriously - this to everyone reading this thread - there is a must-read book, called The Theological Origins of Modernity, by Michael Allen Gillespie (Incidentally, Gillespie's previous major work was about Nietszche, although I haven't read it, but might be of interest to you). Published around 2009. There's a blog post on it here which gives a decent abstract of what it's about, plus a bunch of links to other reviews about it. And, though the book has some major limitations, notably the conclusion which seems very rushed and poorly thought through, it's really an important book.

I won't try and repeat the gist of the book, for that read the 'fundamental point' section in the blog post above. But the immensely valuable job that Gillespie does is trace the dialects of the processes behind the rise of 'modernity' as a world-view and really digs down into the roots of nominalism in the rise of 'scientism'.

There are two other sources which cover similar territory - Richard Weaver's book, which Thorongil mentioned above, is one - but don't want to overload the post. But the point is, Beebert, what you're experiencing is a cultural problem, manifesting in those forms, because you're a sensitive, intelligent, and spiritual person, who has been burdened with a corrosive form of religiosity. But don't despair: the very fact you're having this discussion is part of the cure!

Thank you Wayfarer!

Interesting though... This IS Perhaps a cultural problem that I have experienced, but to what extent do you mean?
The Book sounds very interesting!

The problem is, beebert, that for you it's not simply an intellectual issue. Even though I'm confident of my 'diagnosis', you're dealing with what is basically an existential issue, not an intellectual one. But, whatever you do, *don't* despair over it. Regrettably i have some urgent work to attend to in the real world, I'll be back later.

I understand! No problem, I need to get some sleep Anyway now so... We can continue the discussion later! Thank you anyway!

Listen carefully to the words.



Take that, Calvin!

"Well, to begin with, it tells us that Christianity (or Judaism) for that matter is likely to be speaking the truth, since we notice from experience that God is hidden."

Those two traditions are not alone in Holding this view. Your answer is in all different ways a strawman. You must say something more than that. To say "jews and christians say that God is hidden and history shows he is so they must be true" I find to be a strawman and a ridiculous argument. And it has nothing to do with what Nietzsche REALLY said in the quote.

Btw, regarding Socrates; which Socrates are you referring to when you praise him? ;) The Picture of him by Plato or that by the dramatist Aristophanes? The latter presents Socrates in his play 'The Clouds' as a petty thief, a fraud and a sophist with a specious interest in physical speculations. However, it is still possible to recognize in him the distinctive individual defined in Plato's dialogues.

Hahah xD

Your view regarding evil being ignorance will be addressed later.

This is actually a very dangerous thing to believe, in my opinion - because if this is so, 'God' is also above any form of predication - we can't even say that God is 'good' or 'just', because, according to this, God's ideas of 'goodness' and 'justice' could be utterly capricious; He might decided that what we think is evil, is good, just because He can. — Wayfarer

Yes, God is above any form of predication - exactly! Have you been reading the theologians lately? You've opened up Lossky once again, or Dionysius? That is my exact point! He is above goodness, above Justice, etc.

Supernal Triad, Deity above all essence, knowledge and goodness; Guide of Christians to Divine Wisdom; direct our path to the ultimate summit of your mystical knowledge, most incomprehensible, most luminous and most exalted, where the pure, absolute and immutable mysteries of theology are veiled in the dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence, outshining all brilliance with the intensity of their Darkness, and surcharging our blinded intellects with the utterly impalpable and invisible fairness of glories surpassing all beauty. — Dionysius

That it that is the pre-eminent Cause of all things intelligibly perceived is not itself any of those things.

Again, ascending yet higher, we maintain that it is neither soul nor intellect; nor has it imagination, opinion reason or understanding; nor can it be expressed or conceived, since it is neither number nor order; nor greatness nor smallness; nor equality nor inequality; nor similarity nor dissimilarity; neither is it standing, nor moving, nor at rest; neither has it power nor is power, nor is light; neither does it live nor is it life; neither is it essence, nor eternity nor time; nor is it subject to intelligible contact; nor is it science nor truth, nor kingship nor wisdom; neither one nor oneness, nor godhead nor goodness; nor is it spirit according to our understanding, nor filiation, nor paternity; nor anything else known to us or to any other beings of the things that are or the things that are not; neither does anything that is know it as it is; nor does it know existing things according to existing knowledge; neither can the reason attain to it, nor name it, nor know it; neither is it darkness nor light, nor the false nor the true; nor can any affirmation or negation be applied to it, for although we may affirm or deny the things below it, we can neither affirm nor deny it, inasmuch as the all-perfect and unique Cause of all things transcends all affirmation, and the simple pre-eminence of Its absolute nature is outside of every negation- free from every limitation and beyond them all.

God's ideas of 'goodness' and 'justice' could be utterly capricious; He might decided that what we think is evil, is good, just because He can. — Wayfarer

But your judgement of God is pathetic otherwise. You pretend that God is some sort of man, and if there is no Law to govern his behaviour, then He will "misbehave" :s You have still not given up on the idol of your own self which you project unto your imagination of God.

Poppycock. This is to say that evil is not evil. — Thorongil

No, it's actually not. For someone to be evil, they have to break the moral Law. God cannot break the moral Law as He is not its subject. Therefore God cannot be evil.

This returns us to your original argument, which I only granted for the sake of argument. I suppose the response to your question would be that you are mistaken to speak of evil as existing. That is to say, if you grant that evil is the privation of the good, and it is the case that the good alone exists (God), then evil does not exist. God cannot by definition be present where nothing exists, so the contradiction you thought resulted doesn't actually do so. — Thorongil

This is precisely the reification that I've condemned. I know St. Augustine and the later Saints supported this view, but I think it's absolutely wrong. Does this privation of the good exist? You will now say yes. So apparently, something - the free will of man - can displace God, so that God ceases to exist where the privation of good exists right? So His omnipresence was a joke. That's absurd. And if you'll claim that evil is nothing, then you're even worse than you claim that I am by asserting that God is beyond the Law since you do not take evil seriously.

But as I said, the doctrine also entails that God is goodness, however analogical this claim may be. To enact a complete divorce between goodness and God is not something I've ever seen a traditional Christian theist do. — Thorongil

Wrong doctrine. Or better said, doctrine at a superficial level. Divine simplicity entails first and foremost that God is beyond the things created and nameable.

I've ever seen a traditional Christian theist do. — Thorongil

Right, so you've never read Dionysius? You've never read Isaiah? You've never read Christian mystics? :s

I'm still uncomfortable with this, as it seems to imply a kind of moral relativism, which would suggest, for example, that there are instances when murder is right. — Thorongil

For you? No. (although yes, there are instances when murder is not wrong - or better said excusable. If you attack me with a knife for example, and I end up killing you, that is morally excusable).

But for God to command murder at one time and condemn it at another offends our moral sensibilities. — Thorongil

Okay, so what? God is servant to your moral sensibilities? :s

Murder is intrinsically wrong, no matter the circumstances, which means that its being wrong cannot change. — Thorongil

For the most part yes.

Not univocally, no. — Thorongil

Please expand on this.

Right, so my analogy isn't fallacious. — Thorongil

It is fallacious when you're overextending it, as you are.

I say that God cannot break the law, because the object of the law is the good, so to break it would be to violate his own nature as goodness itself. — Thorongil

God doesn't have a definable nature in His essence. Divine incomprehensibility IS His nature.

I admittedly threw you a slightly off-topic bone here, but this is an interesting response. You don't have to respond in this thread, but what exactly is your view on procreation? I might have mistakenly believed you were an anti-natalist at one point. — Thorongil

I think procreation is not immoral. Whether it should be preferable to never procreating is a question for the individual. Some are called to be completely devoted to God. Others are not.

I was never an anti-natalist.

"Yes, God is above any form of predication - exactly! Have you been reading the theologians lately? You've opened up Lossky once again, or Dionysius? That is my exact point! He is above goodness, above Justice, etc."

So morality is just morality because God randomly defined what it is, but in reality, the opposite might as well be moral? God makes up rules that we shall obey for the sake of it, but he himself doesnt value them other than as something we must obey? Or how do you mean? If I kill someone randomly, is it immoral because I do something Christ would never do, in other words something God would never do, or is it immoral because God just says so?

"Supernal Triad, Deity above all essence, knowledge and goodness;"

I think you are confused as to what "above" actually means. He is defining what God is not, not what he is

So morality is just morality because God randomly defined what it is, but in reality, the opposite might as well be moral? — Beebert

What reality? If the essence of morality is God's Law, then that is reality. What you perceive as morality - at least in its untainted version - was written on your heart by God.

If I kill someone randomly, is it immoral because I do something Christ would never do, in other words something God would never do, or is it immoral because God just says so? — Beebert

It's immoral because you are subject to God's Law - and you were created in such a way as to be subject to it.

I think you are confused as to what "above" actually means. He is defining what God is not, not what he is — Beebert

Yes, He is defining what God is not:

nor godhead nor goodness —

Furthermore, God is incomprehensible - therefore He can't be capricious, for capriciousness is comprehensible.

Take that, Calvin! — Wayfarer

:-!

my all time Favourite Song (Y)

'Love will always win'