Donnadogsoth

If God exists, there exists a moral magnetic pole, so to speak, by which to orient ourselves. Denying that orientation would be a species of madness.

I didn't say "all Atheists," neeeel. I was talking about my own experience. There may be "true" Atheists who cannot understand why anyone would believe in God, and I think I may have met one or two, but that is not me. Well, I used to know things, too. I got over it.

I gave up trying to be an Atheist the day I realised that it was simply powered by hatred against God. "How dare you stub my toe!" spiralling out into the madness of attacking one's own source. There is no way to get rid of God from my mind without admitting I am doing so out of being emotion-ridden by anything less than the capital emotion of agape. It's unfortunate you encountered "religion" in an infelicitous application by people less than rational. Religion, including Atheism, can have that affect on people. I call Atheism a religion in the sense that it is something many people bind themselves to, hence the root of religion in "ligare" as in "ligament" or "ligature". But there have also been more than enough rational, kind, intelligent, and savvy Christians, even Christian clergy, so your own experience should be put into perspective--the visible Christianity is not complete, it is not manifesting itself perfectly, and that's sad, but to be expected in a fallen world. But without it, what's left, worshipping Ayn Rand as the saviour?

The West will not be saved by a cult of honour. Those are the silver souls under Plato's Republican schema. We need golden souls as well, hegemonic, motivated not just for a desire for honour but by the Good itself. Christianity is the golden religion offering the scientifically correct definition of Man, with Christ as the scientifically correct role-model. Courage, competence, virtue, manfulness--are just more perennial pagan political pawns without an appreciation of agape.

No, paganism was already tired, a religion that would go nowhere. “Tolerant of everything except the intolerant”--where have I heard that before? Christianity's rise was a fortunate occurrence by helping bind the social wounds of a dying Rome, helped it overcome the Dark Ages after its collapse and spring forth the Middle Ages of brightness and chivalry and debate, and from there etc.. The Bishops in particular became the advocates of the people in the time when the rich had retreated to their estates and the barbarised imperium was in shambles. And in the East, Christianity merged with the State more completely than it did in the West, holding the Eastern empire together for a thousand years against the Oriental hordes. If paganism were capable of emulating the Christian West's accomplishments, then why didn't it? The Orient, the Tropics, the Americas, none of them went anywhere regardless of their respective accomplishments. None of the them are Futuristic, only the Western civilisation. Paganism will not save us from Islam, economic collapse, moral decay, or a failure of nerve and vision.

1. Tolerant or not, paganism did not contain the “genetic” spiritual material needed to mount a successful Lunar landing, it could not withstand the death of Rome. 2. At a certain time, one needs to prune the rose bush in order to see its best display. I believe we are approaching a new time of pruning. 3. Beliefs lead to virtue which lead to deeds. Christianity has the sublimest beliefs and, so, as a society, to the degree it is followed, leads to Outer Space, whereas everything else does not, or does so on Christian civilisation's coattails. 4. ...Did the Christians burn/destroy all the classical literature? http://christianthinktank.com/qburnbx.html Summary: The relative numerical 'advantage' of New Testament manuscripts over their classical 'rivals' turns out to NOT be due to Christian destruction of libraries or book collections. Rather, it was largely through the efforts of commited Christians that the classical traditions survived to this day.

1. Well, some people prefer to be insane! Different brain chemicals, I guess. EDIT: But Christians do not live and die for honour, unless it is God's honour: they follow the popular Christmas song in "being good for goodness' sake". 2. I, for my part, hold that "just" and "good" have no ultimate meaning without a Creator who exemplifies them.

Ah, I see. No, no, no, I'm not talking in absolute terms like a logical syllogism or 2+3=5. I'm saying that the conditions prevailing in the West have been generated by the Christian train, and that the Marxist train split off from its tracks, and has the most vigour which it has derived from a combination of inherited Christian charity/love of man, and nihilism against the old order, and that if Christianity were eliminated we would be left with a Left that musters most of the power through its bribery of the population, and its capitalising on the population's hatred of hetero/white/God/daddy etc, with everything else at best being reactions against that power.

I just ran a short D&D campaign and I'm out of steam for it, the game was an introductory adventure showcasing the backgrounds of the PCs and how they became adventurers. I threw everything I had at that and now it's kaput, so I don't want to repeat it. Also, I don't find the conventional D&D worlds, planes, etc., intriguing. Call of Cthulhu intrigues me.

View it in terms of what is best for humanity, what serves the general welfare of humanity as a whole. The dividing opposition here, behind Christianity and Marxism, is republicanism and oligarchism. Christianity allowed for the republican impulse to be fostered and advanced, the idea that the nations need some manner of government that exists to serve their respective general welfares, in opposition to the rule by the few.* Marxism pretends to anarchic in goal but in fact always serves the oligarchy. So fit in anyone else, environmentalist, pagan, Moslem, etc., in terms of how well their philosophy advances the interests of mankind. *From this movement can be plausibly sketched an anarcho-capitalist participality that functions as well as or better than a traditional government.

What reason does Christianity exclude? Christianity's goal is not to remake Rome, and should hardly be judged on its failure to do so. Regardless of their merits, empires are, at root, evils in the world, existing to loot their conquered territories. It was the barbarians, not the Church, which predominantly burned books. And it was the Church in Ireland that preserved the learning of the ancients, which was reintroduced into Europe in the Middle Ages. Why should it? Where is the Bolshevik Renaissance? This has nothing to to do with the veracity or salubrity of Christianity. Please educate us as to when these vast bookburnings by the Church took place. Tell that to Augustine, Aquinas, and Nicolaus of Cusa Again the desire for a unified Roman Europe. Rome, like all empires, died because of its own internal contradictions, something Christianity has yet to do. And what would Europe be without Christianity to protect its interests? Very simple: part of a Caliphate.

For the record this saw is false, misleading, and a slander against Christianity and I'll prove it just from memory of every war I can think of fought by or in Christian nations. Hundred Years War 1337-1453 Wars of the Roses 1455 – 1485 English Civil War 1642–1651 American Revolutionary War 1775-1783 French Revolutionary War 1789-1799 Napoleonic Wars 1803-1815 Russo-Japanese War 1804-1805 War of 1812 1812-1815 Crimean War 1853-1856 American Civil War 1861-1865 Spanish American War 1898 Boer War 1899-1902 First World War 1914-1918 Russian Revolutionary War 1917-1918 Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 Second World War 1939-1945 Cold War 1947-1991 Colombian Civil War 1964-2016 US-Grenada War 1983 First Gulf War 1990-1991 Afghan War 2001-2014 Second Gulf War 2003-2011 The exception to this list I can think of are Thirty Years War 1618-1648 The Crusades and...? "Religion" and certainly Christianity, is not the cause of all wars or even most. We must look elsewhere if we want to find the source of war in Christian nations or, I conjecture, anywhere else. Though there is a particular Religion that does seem to be associated with vast amounts of grievous war and belligerence, on account of itself...

We tell the teenager that attempts to make religions without God have already been made, by Auguste Comte and by L. Ron Hubbard, along with less ritualised alternatives to Christian thought as those by Karl Marx, Ayn Rand, Robert Ingersoll and the 19th Century freethinker movement, not to mention the French Revolution's "Liberté, égalité, fraternité". All of these "revolutionary" doctrines have proven underwhelming and have not managed, yet, to supplant Christianity. It's a hoary lie that Christianity and Reason are somehow incompatible. Augustine, Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Nicholaus of Cusa, Gregor Mendel, the Church boasts many men of the cloth who dedicated themselves to reason and science, committed to the knowledge that God is rational as is the world that he has made, and that as man is made in his image, man can follow in his footsteps and achieve real and useful knowledge about the world. It was the Christians who rebuilt Europe after the fall of the Roman empire, largely using the precious libraries of the industrious Irish monks, and it was Christians who realised the Renaissance, the creation of the first nation-state after the principle of the general welfare (a huge advance in personal liberty and governmental accountability), and who created the possibility of the scientific, industrial, and social revolutions in succeeding centuries. If there is going to be an anarcho-capitalist future, it is not going to come about in a revolutionary fashion à la Marxism, which outranks it in terms of appeal to the conscience through the maxim “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” What does an anarcho-capitalism--untempered by Christian love of God and neighbour, by natural law and satisfying worship, and by Christianity's deep intermingling with the thought and glory of the thinkers of ancient Europe--offer but “every man for himself”? A Christian anarcho-capitalism remains plausible. But the West dominated by Atheism will not be dominated by it for long, as it will soon be devoured by the lean, hungry barbarians to the East. Christianity has been historically a strength for Europe. The faith—which is more akin to the faith a man has in his chair or his steed (plenty), not the faith a man has in the edibility of his dreams (none)--comes from the fact of the Resurrection, as witnessed by hundreds, many of whom went on to prove their faith as martyrs. Why would those who could check the facts for themselves, martyr themselves? So the Atheist attack depends on dismissing Christ as an historical figure, as well we should dismiss Julius Cæsar or Joan D'Arc; depends on tales of mass hallucinations, conspiracy, or UFOs. Really? The faith has survived this long not because people are gullible but because the foundation for it, the psychological insights it offers, are strong. Take heart, lad. Europe, Christ, the Church, Science, Reason, we're all on your side. We didn't live this long just to die. But Atheism will not stop the barbarians, and an Atheist religion is something worse than a joke at this late date. Something to ponder, maybe.

No, I'm D&D-ed out. The only other game I'd venture running is Gamma World, but unfortunately I don't have the books for that. But, I have run CoC successfully in the past. We'll see how much enthusiasm there is for it.

Christianity's commandments in a nutshell are love of God, love of neighbour. So, if Christianity defines a society, we might expect both loves in that society to recede as and if Christianity recedes. Yet, in modern times, this is not so. As love of God recedes, we are left with Marxism, embodying the Christian-sounding maxim of “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” This concept of equality and fairness is by now ingrained into the Western world, and Marxism does a good job of opportunistically filling the void left by the absence of Christianity. It doesn't matter if particular “social justice” groups style themselves Marxist, all that is needed is a drive toward utopia, a belief in government, and a dismissal of the concerns of “outer space” that predominates Christianity. Christianity positively defies Marxism by historically serving to defend private property as in Exodus 20:15, to promote the authority of natural law as developed by the Doctors of the Catholic Church, and by putting Caesar in his place in Mark 12:17. Marxism seeks to confiscate property, to deny natural law, and to command total obedience to the government as the source of all law, justice, and progress. Without Christianity, the engine of social progress grinds on towards the Marxist end-point. It may be thwarted by reactionary efforts, but lacking a profound alternative to allegiance to the government, Marxism holds the moral high ground, and its agents both witting and not have the inertia to see it through. That Marxism contains contradictions that will lead to social disaster is irrelevant; the machine will not stop unless it is stopped. Why is Christianity the only one to stop it? Simply put, Christianity is symbolised most clearly in the Crucifixion and by extension the Resurrection, which is the defining event of Western civilisation. Without that event, there could be no Karl Marx, for Europe would have degenerated into perennial Oriental barbarism. With it, man is oriented towards principle, towards a self-image as being made in the image of God and therefore possessed of responsibility and worth which culminates in the Judgement. Thus, every man must become his own Philosopher King ruling his wilful nature and his appetites, in terms of principles of the physical and the artistic-moral, the discovery, assimilation, and transmission of which form the basis for increasing society's power to exist. This is done in the understanding that the universal is rational, under a rational God, and thus mankind's role as caretaker and co-creator is undertaken for the glory of God. Marxism sidesteps the artistic-moral—all art becomes mere propaganda, all morality descends from Marxist theory--and concentrates purely on the physical, accepting the rational nature of the world on atheistic faith. In a sense, Marxism is the Western counterpart to Buddhism; it doesn't ask why the world ultimately is the way it is, it just wants to kill the pain. And, in this, both are attractive to de-Christianised Western minds. A proposed alternative to Marxism, namely radical or anarchic Capitalism, suffers from the same defect: It is a painkiller, and its ultimate solution of dispensing with Caesar entirely, is unproven and frightening. To people seeking a painkiller, Marxism, for all its historical horrors, springs æternal. If we want to avoid Marxism, and instead achieve an abundant and free society, we need to hold onto the Christian worldview, of a rational God, of natural law, of private property, of separating allegiance to God from allegiance to government, and of man being made in God's image, a divine agent for positive change. Only inside this cocoon can abundance, justice, and freedom emerge. Christian society is not static, it is capable of learning, but the lessons of atheist painkillers will only kill the patient. Thus, we have the principled evolutionary potential for anarchic Capitalism as one facet of a total society, provided it is not reduced to the spare, materialist blunder that is Marxism.

I'm willing to Keeper a Call of Cthulhu game for 2-3 Investigators using Skype. Is anyone interested in this game and format?

The Jews as a group seem committed to cutting their own throats through immigration. Consider this gem: Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid offending Muslims

Nor do I. One's wealth in rationality is counted in the coins of principle. What principles would you suggest to help us endure and prosper as a civilisation, avoiding the persecution and destruction of any race?

1.You've agreed that morality is an IF/THEN statement, which was my point. I'll agree then that morality is not the same as lust for sex, money, fame, or power, in that morality is a function of the higher self, the intellect subsuming the appetites, whereas lust for sex, money, etc., is a function of the base appetites or lower self subsuming the intellect. Justice is when the intellect is in charge. 2.If we accept that Man, as the creative species, is both a) made in the image of God, and b) fallen, then we can sift out and extrapolate to God Man's ideal nature. That would be wisdom, mercy, justice—in a word, love--omnipotent, omniscient love. This exemplar of love therefore is what we rightfully worship, emulate, and obey, as seen in the case study of Jesus Christ. I think you disagree with both points a and b, and that's why you resist accepting this exemplar.

1. Gentle hint: paragraphs are your friend. 2. The primary problem with the Black community is that Black IQ averages around 85. The problems associated with this population are what we would expect given that IQ rating. From a policing perspective, the origins of this IQ rating are irrelevant: violent, anti-social people need to be policed. If the social doctors can work their magic and raise the Black average IQ, which will lead to less horrible social outcomes, more power to them, but in the meantime the criminals among them must be held accountable, and not be able to exculpate themselves by appeals to "racism" or somesuch. 3. These particular criminals are not politicians, they are sadists, the type who walk around looking for an excuse to harass, molest, hurt, degrade, or torture someone. A lone, soft, White, mentally retarded Trump supporter sounds right up their alley.

1.We have a disconnect here. Seeking to live a life of honour is still doing it for something. It's not doing it for nothing, which would be irrational. That makes it an IF/THEN proposition. Otherwise you are being "virtuous" for no reason, not even to have the satisfaction of having been virtuous. God's reward to the faithful is akin to the reward of sex in a marriage. Only a pretty debased or emotionally stunted person is going to get married merely so he can have sex. But sex is a natural peripheral reward for people who engage in the sacrament of matrimony for the sake of uniting in love with their betrothed. 2.I believe God's will is not just stronger, but wiser, more merciful, and more just than my own. Therefore I bend my will to his because he knows the best path I should take. It is not nihilism to follow a leader.

1.If “living a life in the pursuit of honour is the only meaningful way to live,” that's tantamount to saying that living such a life--dying such a death--rewards one with meaning. So one is still getting something out of the deal, rather than nothing. You are proposing a rarefied reward but it is a reward nonetheless. To your a-b-c: a.There is objective morality in the same sense that there are objective laws of physics. b.Honour offers a reward of meaning. c.Only meaning is worth pursuing in the long run. 2.Saying “If God "creates" moral principles then they are not actually moral principles,” is like saying “If God creates physical principles then they are not actually physical principles." We might be underestimating God. Whether it's called Nature or it's called God the principles of the universe, moral and physical, require some kind of foundation. I think God is the more sensible one. That this makes morality or justice “arbitrary” is moot. The principles remain regardless of their source.

Fixed that for you.

Yes. We're hated if we're selfish and do nothing, and we're hated if we try to improve the world, and we're hated if we bend over and take it. But, other civilised, less Western nations recognise the value in routing around the system of oppression that is destroying us--look at the BRICS nations' alternative financial system, and the New Silk Road project of China with its "win-win" posture for international development. A sufficient amount of economic development, by nations that are competent enough to handle it, will contribute to world order, and, in principle, to the spread of principle, which is a tide that will lift all boats. The other half of the equation is damming the other tide.