How to Find God | John C. Wright's Journal:
Went looking for opinions on the Litany of Tarski, and found this. BTW, John C Wright considers the Litany of Tarski to be "utterly primitive" in that any philosopher that rejects it, is not to be trusted.
I'm Outside the Autistic Asylum!
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The crazy stuff I can't post anyplace else
Introduction to Wonko the Sane and Outside the Asylum, which this blog is named after.
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On this scale- when I was an athiest, I was a logical positivist. I had to move through the lies of solipsism to find the truth of God and objective morality.
The rationale that makes Catholicism seem so rich and vibrant and atheism so nihilistic is flawed. It would be as if atheists adopted the Star Wars saga as being the truth like Christians do for the Bible. People would say "what a rich culture you atheists have. Such awe inspiring stories". Maybe after a few generations people would come to believe the Star Wars stories as history. That's what makes Catholicism so attractive. People really buy all the stories and ceremonies. They really believe that God is present in the bread and wine. They really picture Mary sitting on a throne as the Queen of Heaven. They believe all this feel good stuff and it makes them feel good. How can atheism compete with that unless it adopts science fiction stories as being as true as Bible stories and Catholic Tradition.
In England, Jedi is already an accepted religion. Complete with all of the rich mythology and ritual of Anglicanism.
Atheism, if it wants to become mainstream, *has* to go there- and in fact already has. The reason _The God Delusion_ sold so many books is because it turned sex into a sacrament and insult into a sacramental- tickling the ears of a generation that had spent the last 40 years turning sex into a sacrament and insult into a sacramental.
But the problem is, unlike Catholicism- Atheism is based on the philosophy of Wicca and Crowley. "Do whatever the hell you want because there is no hell or heaven" is a nihilistic statement ( to be exact- Crowley's version, the Wiccan Rede, is "Do no harm- beyond that whatever you will").
You can't base ethics and morality on a lack of objective morality. It simply does not work.
Sex is a sacrament and insult is a sacramental?
What kind of analogy is that?
As far as "objective" morality, according to your objective morality, homosexuality and contraception are evil. What kind of objectivity is that. What if Jews or Muslims chose to define their rules as objective morality and tried to impose them on you?
The kind of objectivity that rejects moral subjectivism and realizes that the primary purpose of sex is procreative. The kind of humanism that welcomes new human beings regardless of their conception, instead of killing them for materialistic convenience
" the primary purpose of sex is procreative."
So what. The primary motivation for sex is pleasure.
Sex for pleasure is trading short term fun for long term pain. Sex for procreation lasts for all the future generations made possible by that one act. Keep your perverted version to yourself. Rape is not sex.
"Sex for pleasure is trading short term fun for long term pain."
Not necessarily. Sex for pleasure can be part of a long and happy marriage.
"Rape is not sex"? You mean rape is not love. Sex for pleasure is not rape. You're very confused about sex.
How would you know? Your marriage is so unhappy you are contemplating suicide to get out of it.
Marriage based on sex, or even love, is not enough, commitment is what counts- the ability to be truthful and keep a vow.
Which is something I do not see Americanist Neurotypicals having the philosophical ability to do. On either the sexual or the fiscal side of the spectrum.
" Your marriage is so unhappy you are contemplating suicide to get out of it."
Yeah. Because she's a devout Catholic.
I should not have responded in the manner in which I did regarding suicide. It has nothing to do with my wife being Catholic. That was just a knee jerk response to try to justify my own shortcomings.
If I believed, I would say that I am tempted by demons. But there is no need to attribute these temptations to a supernatural entity. It is all psychological.
What the Church identifies as the seven deadly sins really do accurately describe our worst disorders. I am enslaved by my own slothfulness. In a very real sense, it will be the death of me. The thought of eternal rest beckons me and I try to compare it to life and decide which I would prefer should life for any reason become less than bearable. In the end, I just wouldn't choose it over the concern I have for my loved ones.
Speaking as a man who HAS tried to commit suicide, there is little to no difference between the modern mental illness and the ancient demon possession.
Psychology is spiritual- and spiritual is psychology.
I once wrote that if an atheist could but role play Christianity, then under current theology, that is enough to get a soul into purgatory instead of hell. I see no harm in seeing the seven deadly sins and even demon possession as mental illnesses- as long as you remain committed to defeating them in your own mind, rather than sucumbing to them.
"I once wrote that if an atheist could but role play Christianity, then under current theology, that is enough to get a soul into purgatory instead of hell".
I role play for the sake of my wife. But I am certain that death is nothing more than a permanent dreamless sleep in terms of what we experience. The idea of a soul going to heaven, hell or purgatory was invented in order to draw and control followers. No modern thinker should consider it as anything but a carrot and stick attempt to force entice and scare. Purgatory is just a ploy to sell indulgences.
"I am Certain"- Certainty is the enemy of rationality.
The rest is just a repeat of 500 year old Protestant Propaganda.
I know Dawkins had lost the ability to think, I didn't know that you had until this moment.
You are not a modern thinker, because you are refusing to think. "modern thinker" is an oxymoron anyway- I have never met a modernist with the ability to actually think for themselves. The reason they go to hell is because they create hell with their certainty.
You seem to be "certain" about matters of faith. I am certain that hell is what we sometimes make for ourselves in this life and that nothing exists beyond death. Those who believe in life see hell as an eternal separation from God. That wouldn't be hell to me. If there is a God, which I sincerely doubt, there are many separated from him who are doing just fine.
"Modern thinker" is not an oxymoron any more than "religious thinker" is. I find that the latter often often are the ones who lack the ability to think for themselves.
Moral certainty is not absolute certainty- I am not a Once Saved Always Saved Fundamentalist.
OTOH, I do know that if somebody is warning me from jumping off a cliff, I should listen. At least enough to avoid the cliff! It doesn't matter what their original intent was- Truth lives and lies die, if you are open minded enough to follow Truth wherever it leads.
All modern human beings have lost the ability to think for themselves for the most part- I know I'm really bad at it, and that's why I rely on the giants of the past.
Moral relativism actually is tyrannical- as the attempted insult against history shows. If modern thinking was actually leading to truth, there would be no need to defend it using such tactics.
The Catholic Church claims that it teaches "the Truth" and then proceeds to teach absolute falsehoods.
It teaches that you must believe in order to be saved. There is no proof that what you must believe is actually true. To make matters worse, the things you must believe happen to be known to be impossible. The entire Nicene Creed meets all of these criteria. I listen to it every week and am awed by the audacity of insisting that we believe every word of it.
Can you prove that they are absolute falsehoods?
Or are you only going on what Dawkins claims the Church teaching is?
"It teaches that you must believe in order to be saved."
Uh, no. Nostra Aetate. This premise is wrong because the Catholic Church doesn't teach that. Pope Francis recently reaffirmed Nostra Aetate and the consistent teaching of the last 2000 years on this subject:
And it is even in a left-wing journal!
"Can you prove that they are absolute falsehoods?"
Anything that the Church says that goes against the laws of nature such as the virgin birth, resurrection, ascension, assumption, etc. is an absolute falsehood. The laws of nature never have, never are and never will be violated notwithstanding the Big Bang at which time these laws went into effect.
None of those are against the laws of nature.
They are against the modernist scientific model of nature, which may or may not be correct.
So try again.
"They are against the modernist scientific model of nature, which may or may not be correct."
Ancient scripture is inerrant but our most up to date scientific models may or may not be correct. Right.
The ascension and assumption would violate the law of gravity and therefore they are contrived.
Ancient scripture is not inerrant (beginning to wonder what fundamentalist group the Archdiocese of Boston has been going to for Sunday School teachers) it is infallible. And not so merely because it is so, but because it has been proven to be so, by experiment, repeatedly.
Pray tell why the law of gravity denies the possibility of very localized tornados.
"Pray tell why the law of gravity denies the possibility of very localized tornados."
Are you considering that as a possible explanation for Jesus and Mary be taken up to heaven?
It is one possible explanation I have previously heard, yes. Another of course is the transmutation of the bodies to "spirit bodies" (which would also explain Christ's post-resurrection ability to bilocate and walk through walls), which would also not be affected by gravity.
At least two accounts in the Syriac Catholic Scriptures refer to a mashb (sorry about my transliteration, I don't have Aramaic on my keyboard!), or great wind, at the time of both assumptions.
And yes, I just went beyond the Roman Catholic Canon of scripture. I personally really appreciate the Syriac Catholic Church keeping some extra New Testament scriptures in the Peshitta, and while I have no real opinion on the argument between our Eastern Rite brothers and the Roman Catholic Church on whether the Peshitta was translated from Greek or actually contains the untranslated original New Testament (after all, the Apostles, like most Galileans, would have spoken Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew equally fluently) I do find some of the differences interesting (the best is the apparent disagreement within the Peshitta itself whether the saying of Christ to the young rich man was "A camel through the eye of the needle" or "An Elephant through the eye of a needle", and whether it was Christ or Peter who said it!)
" Another of course is the transmutation of the bodies to "spirit bodies" (which would also explain Christ's post-resurrection ability to bilocate and walk through walls), which would also not be affected by gravity."
Or maybe these stories were made up and accepted as factual when they are anything but. Why accept the impossible over the most likely?
Because hiding your head, sticking your fingers in your ears, and shouting "Nyah, Nyah, Nyah I can't hear you" isn't science?
People don't resist torture for made up stories- they instead make up stories to avoid torture, normally.
The fact that the Apostles, well, most of them, were willing to go great distances to die, says that these are not made up stories. There was no profit in ending up at the Vatican for Peter- which at that time wasn't a church and big complex, it was a cemetery for criminals.
"The fact that the Apostles, well, most of them, were willing to go great distances to die, says that these are not made up stories."
This is the most overused and least convincing argument for believing stories that were made up years after the Apostles went out and preached the coming of the kingdom of heaven. They didn't travel and die for these stories because they didn't know them. All they needed to get started was the report of an empty tomb, which could of been the result of the tomb only being used for holding the body until the Sabbath was over. The Apostles would not have been the ones who moved the body. For all they knew, Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. Then the stories spread and were embellished. It makes more sense than supernatural alternatives.
It is overused because it is true. Whether or not you find it convincing says more about your personal bias and inability to evaluate data, than it does about the argument.
I'd suggest reading some of the non-biblical accounts for understanding, but I know you'll just dismiss those as "stories" also because they are inconvenient to your argument, you'd rather just claim "Nyah Nyah Nyah, I can't hear you" than deal with the Truth. It is the same with all hard atheists, you're just acting like two year olds, and then you wonder why we treat atheists like children who are incapable of reason.
No, I'm talking about the direct rejection of data just because you are uncomfortable with where the Truth leads.
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