Donnadogsoth

I see that you don't see that God's love (your love, my love) is a fraud.

What difference does Scripture make if we are all predestined for Heaven or Hell? Why should we read or heed Scripture in any way if our fates are sealed before we are even born?

We are made in his image and thus possess the credentials to use our reason to construct a theology. And by this reason we know that there can be no evil greater than predestining someone for æternal Hell.

Given that predestination to Hell is the maximum evil one could conceive, and that maximum evil is incompatible with God's goodness, the existence of God proves there must be free will.

Why would God torture himself by bothering to create the Universe? I realise you say God is the Universe. My question stands: why would God hurt himself? Life hurts. If it didn't there would be no religion. Why does God hurt himself, and on a large scale, for long, long periods of time? Why does God tolerate ugliness, and brokenness, and blasphemy, and pain? Why is he so masochistic and incompetent? I'll tell you why: because God is loveless, and God is lonely. There is no one except God so God pretends to love his big toe. He is lonely and he cuts himself until he hurts and bleeds and from the cuts spring forth dancing bubbles of creation that he is entranced by, falling into his own reflections and dying to himself so that he can experience love for another...even another shaped like a big toe. God will never be satisfied in his lovelessness and so he will never stop casting his spells of illusion to pretend there is someone else, to pretend that he is a creator, to pretend he has love, love, love. Love is all he needs, and love is all he will never have.

Yes, yes, and God hardened Pharoah's heart, too. Does this mean Pharoah and Saul were puppets lacking free will? If they were, why not the rest of us? If we're all puppets, then how is God' s judgement not evil? If God's judgement is evil how is God himself not evil? If God is evil, why should we not hate him? And so we manage to hate ourselves free of any obligation towards the divine. Isn't twisting Christian doctrine fun?

It's almost as if you've decided to be an atheist from the start, and so are not considering the matter in any other terms. Why would God intend a fallen world? That would mean he was evil, yet evil is always a lack or a privation, so that would mean God is imperfect and lacking. How could such an imperfect being be æternal? God uses whatever is available to achieve his ends, including evil kings. Conservation of culture demands group action, and group action requires both leadership and suppression of anti-conservative elements. Corruption here is inevitable but can be ameliorated through foresight and corrected with patriotism. My point is that Christianity alone as religion incorporates the understanding of human frailty as part of the natural condition requiring spiritual work to resist, and it is little wonder Christianity is where men chose to revive Athens, as an example of a republic that in principle had the state exist for the people and not vice versa as was the case almost everywhere else since time immemorial.

The Universe changes. That which changes is not æternal.

How is necessity not a sufficient reason?

God's existence is grounded in necessity. There cannot be nothing, there must be something, and this something must be the Origin, as I explain here.

Only the Origin as explanation for the Universe coheres with the principle of sufficient reason.

Accepting that pleasure is fleeting and hedonism is vain is called growing up. We didn't need the Buddha to tell us that.

Nevertheless, recognising that there is an æternal Origin is closer to satisfaction than asserting that the Universe is inexplicably contingent.

Is the difference between Buddhism the philosophy, and Buddhism the religion, their differing stances toward suicide?

Simply put, Christianity has built into it a fallible but nevertheless potent weapon against the arbitrary use of power, namely the doctrine of the Fall of Man. The syllogism goes like this: The Universe was intentionally created by God. The Universe includes wicked kings. Therefore God intends there to be wicked kings. Surely this logic has prevailed throughout the world throughout almost every time and place. People accept the way things are as the way things must be. However, if the world is fallen, the syllogism is broken. The Universe was intentionally created by God but self-corrupted and thus failed to reach perfection. Consequently no one can claim that wicked kings are intended by God, but are rather part of a broken world it lies with us to seek to repair, or at least ameliorate. The only similar idea I have found to this is the Oriental concept of the Mandate of Heaven, which says that any emperor who becomes wicked loses the mandate and therefore may be deposed by the people. For persons concerned with freedom, on this count they should not dismiss Christianity as being incompatible with the highest possible heights of freedom, precisely because the doctrine of the fall precludes God from sanctioning all that occurs on Terra. This doctrine's implications have not always been declaimed, as seen most notably in the reign of the Absolutist Monarchs of Europe (1500-1800 AD), but has always remained there, pushing for self-reflection, humility, and the recognition that the world is not as it should be.

The Origin is a recourse to the necessary, rather than to inexplicable contingency. Only Christianity explains the world as it is satisfactorily, because it is premised on the rationality of the world, whereas Buddhism condemns us to brute facticity while denying the efficacy of reason.

Why should anyone take seriously a religion that has no explanation for the origin of the Universe?

via Imgflip Meme Generator

Trump's missile strike on Syria is just American outrage, not part of any coherent plan. How many days' worth of outrage is a chemical attack on civilians worth?

I recommend the rump history and arts be combined with ceremonial magick and be called HAM.

Yes, I've been reading Decline. Two points: 1. He divides the phases of a culture into (a) Culture, and (b) Civilisation. A Culture is young, vibrant, exploratory, creative, artistic. A Civilisation is old, stultified, money-based, practical, in the twilight or decline--possibly reaching a steady state like China, but also possibly being extinguished and conquered. The Classic example is between the Roman republic and the empire, but he delineates other cultures as well. 2. He calls the West "Faustian" and distinguishes it from the "Magian" culture of the Middle Eastern religions. The nature of Faustian civilisation is in the symbol of the infinite. We are the infinity culture. For example, look at all the modern Western genres of popular culture: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery/Crime, Horror, Pornography, and Superhero. None of these things were created by non-Faustian cultures in the way that we have them, and all of these things represent drives towards liberation. SF is infinite science. Fantasy is the infinity of alternate, what Tolkien called "Secondary Worlds". Mystery/Crime showcases infinite intellect and the power of forensics technology. Horror is the infinite destruction of the body and the despair of the mind. Pornography is the total liberation of the libido. And Superhero is the liberation of the normal man through the acquisition of quasi-magical powers. There are many more examples of how the Faustian culture is the infinity culture. Other cultures have their own symbols, not all of which are explicated by Spengler, whose concern is the West and its decline. EDIT: Also the genre called Western: the unlimited possibilities of the Frontier and the willed ego.

What is matter as “the only medium through which we experience experience”? If it is brute “is” then we collapse into materialist determinism and must submit our resignation as philosophers. If it is a shadow of principled interaction, though, then we must locate reality only in terms of those principles, which means that those principles are what are mediating our experience of experience. Specifically, what is the human mind? It embodies creativity that is the most powerful force in the Universe, capable of altering the face of Terra and theoretically the entire Universe as well, in ways more radical and more quickly than the other great forces such as gravitation, the nuclear forces, and electromagnetism. This force, creativity, capable of fissing and fusing atoms, capable of acting like a fast-forward geological process in altering the faces of entire planets, does not exist as a mechanical happenstance like a Slinky that Fate has set in motion down a flight of stairs toward a hypothetical Heat Death. Rather, it is fundamental to the Universe itself, capable of, through mankind, discovering and exploiting universal laws for its own benefit. Such a force would instead of being mechanical happenstance, be a force imbued into Nature itself. V.I. Vernadsky termed it the Noösphere or realm of cognitive interaction with the Universe. Characteristically, it is more powerful in the long term than the Biosphere or realm of biological activity, which, in turn, is more powerful than what we might call the Lithosphere or realm of abiotic activity. The Noösphere as an ordering principle precedes all specific manifestations of man's minds, just as gravity preceded the elliptical orbits of the planets. To answer your question, then, is to ask where did the orbit of Ceres exist prior to the creation of the Solar System? Answer: Slumbering in the potential of the Universe. So with my mind, prior to the arrangement of principles which comprise what my mind experiences as matter, my mind was slumbering as potential, just as it will so slumber after those principles have taken my experienced material body apart. Gravity and creativity exist before orbits and men, calling those latter forth into active experience through their interactions. The proof of this is in the potency of man to alter the Universe for his benefit. Without that, we would be wretched apes. With it, we see that the Universe is arranged such that the laws of the Universe are actually the laws of our mind. In that sense then we never die, and, like Christ, we preceded our own conception.

Have you read any Spengler, Mishi2?

You've got it.

Oh, I get it, April Fools!