Donnadogsoth

You don't value your war heroes either, I'm guessing. Because that's what Jesus is, a war hero in the ongoing campaign against oligarchism. People like you, with your visceral and quite stupid hatred have slugged away at Christianity before, prematurely jumping with glee at its supposed interment, even as it recovers and revitalises itself stronger than before. The fact you are wasting time focussing on Christianity as if it were a threat, while dismissing oligarchism to the distant second, is proof you continue to cover for your real masters. “[T]he deterioration of nature is closely connected to the culture which shapes human coexistence”. Pope Benedict asked us to recognize that the natural environment has been gravely damaged by our irresponsible behaviour. The social environment has also suffered damage. Both are ultimately due to the same evil: the notion that there are no indisputable truths to guide our lives, and hence human freedom is limitless. We have forgotten that “man is not only a freedom which he creates for himself. Man does not create himself. He is spirit and will, but also nature.” --Pope Francis, Laudato Si'

When were feminists ever a legitimate movement, in your view?

My defence of Christianity resting, the question now revolves around where this libellous contempt for Christianity is coming from. It's not coming from pure reason, Christianity is perfectly compatible with reason, encourages reason, as the trajectory of scientific and cultural development of the Western world amply shows. It's rather coming from the oligarchy itself, which wishes to destroy Christianity as a means of stopping cultural progress, and is employing every means at its disposal to do so. Without Christianity in the way, the culture is free to devolve towards ever greater depths of pornographic depravity, crassness, ignorance, rootlessness, and cosmopolitan confusion. By trashing our religion—besides our race, our culture, our language, and our borders—they ensure we are atomised and impotent against the enormous economic, cultural, and scientific problems we presently face. Libelling Christians to a man as being sadists reveals a person as a tool of the oligarchy.

Star Wars and Harry Potter revolve around skill and luck. Their heroes live charmed lives and win through by their skill and luck, and their victories "feel right" to audiences because of those audiences' hope that righteousness will prevail. But those heroes exist in phony universes that bear little resemble to the world we live in. Their lives and victories resonate mythically, not historically. Christ's sacrifice is not like that. He didn't have any luck, or any skill. He saw the wickedness in the world and faced it down, by laying down his life. Christ, not Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter, is the pattern for the passion that saving the world takes. Not to say that saving the world doesn't take some skill and some luck, but the core of the matter isn't decided by those things. Lacking Christly passion, when forced to choose people join the Dark Side, whether out of greed or fear.

So we agree on natural law, that there is such a thing, and it, or parts of it are discoverable. So we can discover principles of nature, of science and art specifically, and we don't have to be Christians to do it. These principles are all portions of a single Law, that we can have scientific truthfulness about, but which we can never discover fully. We can discover it in part, and grow in our knowledge, but the entirety is always beyond our grasp. Now take human nature, specifically humanity as a single indivisible entity, in relation to a specific human being. So we have the One (human race) and the Many (individual humans). What is the spiritual, mental, psychological relationship between the two? It is a sense of indebtedness to the past and a hope for the future, a sense and a capacity (at least in theory) to make a contribution to the human race in such a way that that contribution lasts forever, and effects the outcome of the past, and the destiny of the future. And this is passion, or agape, and immortality. And this is why the story of the Crucifixion of Christ is so important, because it is the essence of man's relationship to the universe.

Not unless those ideas conform to natural law. The principle of oligarchism is an idea, is it immortal? Do the planet's power elite fancy themselves immortal as they crush the lower classes and mould the universe around them? Or is there a higher law we appeal to, a law of agape--but, of course, you have said that agape is fantasy, creativity is fantasy, and immortality of the creative, agapic soul, a fantasy. What then do you oppose the oligarchs with?

More respect, I see. Take away the appeal to the immortality of the human soul, take away agape, take away imago viva Dei (creativity), and mankind neither has any compass nor engine, nor is of any consequence in the universe, and shall, as he should, wither to nothing.

With artificial wombs why copulate at all?

I think my human sacrifice death cult is a good idea and here's why: You and AronRa are talking like Pharisees. You're focussing on the jots and the tittles of the ancient Jewish laws while missing the spirit of Christianity. I won't go so far as to say you're alienated from the Holy Spirit, but you certainly haven't registered the concept of the sublime as manifested by Christ. The essence of the concept of the sublime, is the transformation or metaphorical peripetaia of tragedy, creating a species of triumph, a triumph through tragedy. Christ, as the most human of humans, was put to death by the Romans at the instigation of the Pharisees for the crime of threatening the “powers and principalities” of the world, which is what Christians continue to do today. This set in motion a force that would eventually absorb Rome, fight off Islam, generate the Renaissance and lead to the globally-extended European civilisation that ended slavery, brought hundreds of millions out of poverty, and went to the Moon. China didn't do this. Africa didn't do this. Islam didn't do this, but Christendom did, on the basis of the principle of the sublime. The modern atheist Pharisees would have us believe that Christianity is a mere rider to the success of art, politics, economics, and science over the past 2,000 years, rather than a force for positive change fighting a difficult battle against entrenched wickedness within and without. Cancel this human sacrifice death cult and you cancel the sublime, and then God help us.

Found this good little intro to the push toward cyber-censorship, which is really on the cusp of being the only censorship that matters. UN to Censor the Internet to Save Feminists' Feelings

It should be possible to get a one-to-one match between basic brain functions, so that we can know if the ant is sleeping, is angry, is hungry, etc., based on what we know of our own neurology. We might not "feel" exactly what it's like to be an ant, but we should eventually at least be able to tell its intentions and brain state on the neurological level.

An interesting ally. Thanks for posting this, Patrick. This is the most spirited defence of wikkum* I've seen. She tells clearly how hypocritical these femi-warriors are, and notes that it's the Christians who are among the most vocal in denouncing these "culturally relative" crimes. All defenders of the West should aspire to be as pissed off as she is. * white hetero cis christian males

You call me, my God and my Christ immoral, and the question arises why, and you wave in the direction of YouTube without even providing a single link? How is that respectful?

Don't forget the threat of secularism wedding itself to Leviathan and producing a new communist-style totalitarianism, this time with homofascism and feminism in key places. We're closer to that than most might think.

Sounds like itching ears to me.

Okay, then a followup question: How close are we to producing robot bugs that we can't tell apart from natural bugs? Presume naked eyes only and not allowing a squish test.

For my part, I'm interested in knowing why Will Torbald thinks Christianity is "deeply amoral and immoral". Once people have accepted that nothing can produce everything for no reason, well, who's being irrational here?

A friend years ago suggested bugs are "pure physics" without any consciousness at all. It occurred to me that the Turing test is aiming too high. It would be simpler to try to establish whether there is any meaningful difference between the mental processes of a biological ant, and of a robotic ant. How close are we to replicating ant consciousness as measured by complexity and precision of behaviour?

On the contrary, religion puts logic in its place, is eminently reasonable (viz. St. Thomas Aquinas), appeals to the highest reality, and gives immortal purpose and hope to life. Atheism leads to hedonism, nihilism, materialism, and is a general bummer.

Aesthetic, moral, cultural, economic, and probably more are why it appeals to me. It is among the chief defenders of Western civilisation and on that count merits apology. But, I'm interested in knowing why you think Christianity is "deeply amoral and immoral".

"...I couldn’t believe it, I had shown such courage by taking sexual initiative only to be turned down? DISEMPOWERING!! Denying me sex was his way of trying to regain patriarchal power over me, he was no doubt intimidated by a strong woman like myself, saying no was a desperate attempt to try to show that he was the boss. That’s as much a Patriarchal power move as rape—in fact, it is rape. Denying a woman sexual fulfillment is rape..." Are we really that far off from this kind of thinking? Maybe this article is giving feminists ideas... Even better is the link to the right: August 31, 2015 Obama on the WDBJ shooting: “It’s sad that yet another young black man has fallen victim to gun violence”

I used to be an atheist, I gave it my best shot, but I couldn't muster the faith to believe that everything came from nothing for no reason. There is nothing richer to contemplate, no morality more sublime, no consequence on human civilisation greater than the God of Christianity.

That's presuming God is mundane enough to merely exist.

You're describing pantheism. It's a seductive view, which in its stripped down form gives us the advantages of theism without all the worship, and the beautiful sterility of atheism without the crassness. Very kumbaya with marshmallows. The (chief) problem with pantheism is that it doesn't explain Being's origin. It is just another "shit happens for no reason" stance. The Christian (mystical) conception of God is that he is anterior to Being and thus is the origin of the origin, that he is all in all, everything in everything, and nothing in nothing. Yet we as creatures are not God, even though God is everything in us. This is a richer understanding of Origin, God, and religion than the relatively malnourishing pantheism can provide.

Children merit a protective bubble shielding them from the aggressive, coarse, cynical, and crass realities of the adult world. Coarse language is part of this crassness. They should be shielded from sex, violence, and coarse language to a degree that will allow them to develop sensitive sensitivities towards their world and the people, creatures, and things inhabiting it. That some dribs and drabs of adult oppressiveness will make it through is to be expected, but this does not negate the principle, any more than the odd bee-sting negates the principle of wariness around bees.