Religious discussion (continued from “Christianity and Chastity”)

Hold up! Until now you’ve been badmouthing God for (as you perceive it) punishing people for not doing His will. Now it seems you are badmouthing Him for NOT punishing them.
(Quoting your words, sounds like suddenly you want the “merciless spoilt child god” to stop the Israelis from “using their free will to live as they wish, rather than doing whatever it was [He] wanted”.)

 

I just quoted exactly where you did it. In fact it’s a recurring refrain from you: this idea that the alien spaghetti thing or whatever you call it is somehow simultaneously power crazy yet also irresponsibly laissez faire. And you adopt a peculiarly indignant style of rhetoric for someone who finds it all just silly. Personally I’d rather you didn’t get all emotional about it because I’m interested in an actual exchange of ideas rather than an acrimonious dispute. You’re entirely within your rights to believe and disbelieve whatever you choose, it’s not doing anyone any harm! And there’s no reason you should actually inform yourself about Christian teachings, except insofar as you talk about it without really knowing your subject matter, and appear perversely blind to the inconsistencies and contradictions in the things you say.
As for this latest Israel diatribe…. that really did surprise me! Why so ants-in-your-pants about that, of all things? Do you have skin in the game?

 

“Also, when the US sanctioned Iraq and it led to the deaths of 500,000 iraqi children and your god was okay with that.”
This is another eccentric assertion you throw into the ring - what is it that makes you think God is “okay with that”?
It’s like: you don’t think there’s a god, but then you do this weird manoeuvre of saying but if there IS a god, it does/thinks x - but this x bears no relation to Christian belief. Same as you assertively promote the notion of the Bible being the supposed source of all religious dogma, when it isn’t. As I explained before, it’s simply one resource - you’d be much nearer the mark to understand it as a set of written highlights from a far more extensive oral tradition, and only really intelligible within that context.

 

You also wrote this as a caricature of how I said the Bible should be understood:
"I take the bible seriously and adhere to it, but not all of it, obvs"
Not the case at all, though. I don’t apply my own idiosyncratic interpretation, I faithfully follow the exegesis laid down by the Church Fathers of the first millennium after Christ.

 

Ok @JaySaysYes , I re-read all your posts on this thread. Tell me if I’m correct in this summary of your perspective:
You believe (citing Alan Watts) that we are just feeding tubes that think we think. We are also carriers of genetic information from generation to generation. We die and decompose leaving no trace of our subjectivity other than what we have communicated to others (such as our children). But this is ok, because it’s potentially a wild and rewarding ride while it lasts - and in fact the ephemeral nature of subjective existence adds to the value of living in and embracing the present moment, rather than detracting from it. As for love and compassion for the other feeding tubes, maybe there’s no “reason” for it (aside from some kind of evolutionary advantage), but it is what you feel, and you feel it to be good. Hell, if you value your own existence and are just one of many subjectivities, why shouldn’t you grant equal value to the lives of all the other beautiful if pointless points of consciousness that briefly sparkle in the void? Especially since doing so gives your life a sense of added depth and richness. And returning back to the first sentence of this post - that “just” in “just feeding tubes” is misplaced, because there’s nothing wrong with being a feeding tube. It’s enough. In fact it can be magnificent.
Am I on the right track?

 

And if I am broadly correct in my understanding, can I further guess that when push comes to shove, what gets your goat about Christianity (maybe theism in general) is partly that it kind of spits on and despises this apprehension of life in the here and now being valid for its own sake, and also that it encourages adherents to invest in some other life, which is always out of reach because fictional: “pie in the sky when you die”. Christianity is internally inconsistent, founded on a set of palpably nonsensical dogmas, hostile to independent critical thinking, and has historically and to this day been associated with oppression, cruelty and graft?

 

And you oscillate between two positions regarding Christianity: on the one hand, it’s just laughable bullshit, a paper tiger, so let those arseholes think whatever they like; but on the other hand, those arseholes never cease to ram their toxic bullshit down other people’s throats and indoctrinate children with it, use it to conceal their bad faith agendas, and set themselves up as puffed up magistrates looking down on everyone else - whilst at the same time indulging in weird self-flagellation. As a character in the (excellent) play Equus says of the church “to me, all that stuff is just bad sex”.

 

Well that’s nice.
But, am I approximately correct in my understanding of your position?

 

I’ll give it a go.
Can I ask something of you?

 

Since I am sincerely interested in our discussion, and since I have ordered that book and watched that film about the demon and am now about to watch another on your recommendation, could you more frequently give serious answers to questions I ask, and explain your own thinking a little more transparently? I do understand the temptation to be facetious, and it doesn’t offend me… it just hinders debate.

 

ROBERT REDFORD??? Fuck me, he’s still alive!

 

That’s fair. Our discussion/sparring is valuable to me not because I want to shift your thinking but more because I like to challenge my own. And because if people with differing worldviews can’t communicate, then given that we are of one substance and on the same planet it calls into question the value of those views. There IS common ground, we’re both standing on it.

I don’t expect to get instant or lengthy replies (and I KNOW I’m long winded!) but if I do devote time and thought it’s disappointing if the reward for waiting is “you’re psychotic/ because God/ you just want to be pegged by the Virgin Mary” etc.
I don’t rend my garments and shriek “blasphemy!”, I just feel I got a low return on my investment.

 

Nope

 

What you on about?