Meaninglessness

[rusmeister]

I'm going back and really just picking up snippets here and there rather than the full discussions, but it seems from certain parts -

Av, I am here explaining the worldview to you, so you can hardly call it "a bad analogy" if I tell you that within the worldview it is a good analogy.

As to Job: If you insist on reading the story without reference to the tradition that gave birth to it, you cannot possibly interpret it correctly. It'd be a lot like an alien seeing a man cutting up another man on a table with a knife and being shocked and horrified - until he learned that the man was a surgeon bent on saving the other man's life. You can have a different view and see the same thing - but be completely wrong in your interpretation. So saying that you will ignore both traditional Judaic and Christian explanations of Job and just see...what you insist on seeing in it is ignorance, not wisdom.

- that you are claiming no individual part of your arguments can be analysed and found to be inadequate because they make sense within the context of the larger worldview, and that this larger worldview itself cannot be analysed and found inadequate because it is an absolute truth from an "Authority".

In which case, I'm not sure why you take part in the argument at all, because it is not an argument. You have established a position which is true and correct because it is true and correct (unverifiability be damned), one that exists independant (and ignorant) of external analysis or criticism, and one which has absolutely nothing to gain in this discussion because it is already certain of its own rightness.

Well, Murrin, I think you are right if you are saying that I insist that my faith cannot be "scientifically proven" - only no worldview can be. The terrible trouble, even with the most objective science, is that it is conducted by fallible human beings.

Some things can be argued, though - above all modern nonsense about traditional religious faith - which, to borrow from language popularly used against my position, arrogantly assumes that people who do NOT hold those views are rational and objective, while people who DO hold those views are irrational crackpots. (Not saying you're saying that, but a lot of people do - like the Fallen just did in essence).

If I could put things in one nutshell, I'd say that I have been on both sides of the fence - belief and unbelief - and most of those opposed to Christ really haven't. I've calmly listened to and listed myself rational arguments against belief as a more-or-less intelligent unbeliever. (I was really bitter about the Baptists for some years.) I don't see many here - any at all, really, with the possible exception of Ali - and I'm not at all sure how intelligent the (Christian) faith that she was in was - that have really been on the inside of intelligent faith. When once you are, you know that, even if you walk - apostatize - later, that the issues on the side of faith are deeper than cast by the unbelieving crowd in general.

If someone says something that I am convinced - by a combination of faith and reason - to be untrue, it would be irrational of me to NOT speak out, to pretend that it didn't matter if I believe that it does.

Again, I think the big objection is to the idea that anyone can be certain, and that there is a fundamental demand that no one be able to be certain - and this demand is NOT entirely rational as a conclusion, but is itself merely a dogma (held often unconsciously). I also think certainty itself is misunderstood. I am certain because I consciously CHOOSE to be - a far more rational way to be certain than one where... I just am. The believer at his best must always experience doubt, just as the unbeliever at his best must at times doubt his own unbelief.

Dunno if that helps clarify anything at all, or whether I am doomed to be seen as an irrational Cuckoo-for-CocoaPuffs whacko fundamentalist. I think some worldviews here (irrationally) MUST hold that I am, no matter what evidence is ever offered to the contrary - otherwise those worldviews are threatened. The safer thing for those people is to say that the believer is simply bigoted, prejudiced, and other rhetorical epithets. I for my part don't think the unbeliever's position simple in most cases.

[rusmeister]

You don't want to hear it - then don't engage me. Cail and I don't clash because we stay solidly out of each other's gardens.

You're in my garden. You're insisting that you know more about it than I do. The arrogance it takes to make such a claim - to outright say it - is extraordinary. Never in my life have or will I tell a Christian that I know better than him/her what it feels like to accept Jesus into my heart. To set yourself up as that kind of authority... Honestly, it's staggering. The statement is so absurd that I would normally be take it as a joke. But you've said it, and similar things, often enough that I know you do believe it.

Although only a couple of months into KW, I've been following a few more contentious threads with interest and find myself unable to resist chipping in with my humble opinion at this increasingly bizarre point.

Fist, you're on a loser here, a guaranteed cast-iron 100% take it to the bank loser. Your (to me) perfectly rational and valid viewpoint is that there are absolutes, but those are subjective absolutes - it's a given to anyone who has the faintest rationality that your absolutes/belief sets/call-them-what-you-wills may be necessarily different from mine or anyone else's. That's straight back to Descartes with quite possibly the only self-validating statement in all of history in "cogito, ergo sum", which of course is limited by its very nature to only validating the subjective consciousness.

As such, you can in all good faith (no pun intended) allow believers their view while still allowing yourself your own. Sadly, in some more extreme cases, there is no possibility whatsoever of the reverse being true.

There is quite literally no point debating with those whose faith is dependant upon and predicated by supposedly external and supposedly objectively real absolutes - they will *always* believe that they experientially know more about such absolute external metaphysical truths than you. Is this arrogance or hubris? Megalomania or fanaticism? Possibly, but IMHO it's far more about pure fear... they *have* to believe as they do, and you *have* to be wrong/more ignorant in their eyes, because to admit any other possibility would cause their entire belief structure to come crashing down like a house of cards in a hurricane.

That is a terrifying prospect to them - and as such they simply *cannot* allow the faintest possibility of an alternate co-existent truth. In similar vein, this is at least partially the basis for religious sectarianism... numerous wars have been fought in the past in an attempt to wipe out the infidel, actions allegedly morally justified at the time because the infidel equally *had* to be wrong. Against that background mindset, Fist, I am afraid that you're entirely wasting your time - you and I are both benighted infidels and nothing we can say will ever have the slightest sway.

Personally speaking, I have huge ethical issues with those who base their belief structures on what to me seems to be no more than moral and intellectual fascism dressed up as being more enlightened, in communication with God, closer to the Buddha or whatever - I will of course defend their inalienable right to do so, as much as I'll defend my right to reject the (to me) exclusionary blindness of those beliefs.

I'll close by adding that those people of faith that I have met who have gained my great respect are those who freely admit the essential nature of their faith - they've described it as an entirely subjective and personal revelationary experience... they don't say it's right for everyone and try to pseudo-rationalisingly force-feed it down everyone's throats, but simply state that they've found it absolutely right... for them. That to me is a reasoned and frankly courageous standpoint, in that it's not based on a fevered and sadly necessitous denial of anyone daring to believe that there are indeed alternative viewpoints and other bases for morality.

PS I've not trawled back long enough to find any conversation between Cail and those of fervid belief solely based upon allegedly revelatory objective absolutes, but having seen a few of Cail's other posts in other threads by now, I imagine he decided long LONG ago that even the purest rationality will never have any relevance to or effect upon certain types of proselytising belief and went onto less futile pastimes instead

Thanks, TF!
I know a complement when I see one!


I will say that there is no "force-feeding". I find that the best way to avoid someone else's "force-feeding" is to simply ignore them. For my part, it appears that you are saying that your favorite believers are ones who are not at all sure of their beliefs, and above all, that their beliefs need mean nothing for others. That sounds very... nice, but pretty far from any desire to find any objective truth. Of course, if you start with a blind dogma that there IS no objective truth (note that I said "IF"), I guess you wouldn't look for it.

I've said the rest in my response to Murrin.

[I'm Murrin]

I guess it comes down to that, then - the idea of certainty. I find it perfectly rational to accept that nothing I experience is verifiable to the extent that it can be taken as absolutely true. Our senses themselves are merely adequate approximations of the fullness of reality around us, and our minds do not possess an unlimited processing power. TheFallen has it right - Cogito Ergo Sum is the closest we can ever come to an actual truth.

The fact that our experiences are entirely internal itself invites the consideration of solipsism. It seems best to accept what closest matches your perceptions and not worry about something that can never be determined by mere [strike]human minds[/strike] participants in this portion of reality - absolute truth.

Doubt is a trait to be highly valued, when it is possessed in healthy amounts. Without doubt, we'd never have left the dark ages.

[rusmeister]

I guess it comes down to that, then - the idea of certainty. I find it perfectly rational to accept that nothing I experience is verifiable to the extent that it can be taken as absolutely true. Our senses themselves are merely adequate approximations of the fullness of reality around us, and our minds do not possess an unlimited processing power. TheFallen has it right - Cogito Ergo Sum is the closest we can ever come to an actual truth.

The fact that our experiences are entirely internal itself invites the consideration of solipsism. It seems best to accept what closest matches your perceptions and not worry about something that can never be determined by mere [strike]human minds[/strike] participants in this portion of reality - absolute truth.

Doubt is a trait to be highly valued, when it is possessed in healthy amounts. Without doubt, we'd never have left the dark ages.

While I agree to a significant extent on doubt, as I indicated in my last comment, it is not an unqualified virtue, and when wrongly applied, is a vice. If one continually doubts the faithfulness of one's spouse, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy - the behavior motivated by the doubt can shove trust - an essential element in marital relations - aside and be entirely counter-productive. It is faith, then, that is the virtue. Doubt is the lack or absence of faith. Its character is essentially negative, and while it may be appropriate to doubt (something that really IS negative, it is never good to doubt for the sake of doubting, while faith really can be good for the sake of having faith.

Cogito Ergo Sum is the beginning, not the end, of discovering truths. The person who accepts that and thinks further discovers truths. The person who doubts THAT can discover nothing at all.

Our experiences are NOT entirely internal (although we certainly have internal experiences), so it is decidedly NOT a fact. We encounter and have dealings with others and have real effects on their lives, and have external experiences that are true, that really happen, are objective, and affect more than our own imagination.

These things CAN be argued, as you can see.

[DukkhaWaynhim]

Our experiences are NOT entirely internal (although we certainly have internal experiences), so it is decidedly NOT a fact. We encounter and have dealings with others and have real effects on their lives, and have external experiences that are true, that really happen, are objective, and affect more than our own imagination.

These things CAN be argued, as you can see.

Except this statement is the exact opposite of what you state to Fist when he claims that we can have meaning beyond the span of our lives even though we ourselves may be permanently done as soon as we're dead... because of the lasting impact we make on other people, and the world in general. We are time-bound on this plane, even if we have eternal souls... but even if we don't have them, we can dramatically impact the world, for good or ill. So, if you agree with this statement, why argue with Fist when he makes the same statement?

dw

[TheFallen]

Dear oh dear. We now have a combination of blatant sophistry and contradiction with a pinch of hypocrisy, slowly cooked over a complete lack of self-awareness. Not that it'll be worth it, but...

Well, Murrin, I think you are right if you are saying that I insist that my faith cannot be "scientifically proven" - only no worldview can be. The terrible trouble, even with the most objective science, is that it is conducted by fallible human beings.

Yes absolutely. Faith and empirical scientific proof cannot co-exist. The latter negates any need of the former to exist. But on your very own self-stated basis, how in the world can you then possibly be so absolutist? You clearly are convinced beyond any possibility of a shred of a doubt that your world view as revealed to you - note that I don't insist on your being the author of that world view - is a universal and absolute objective truth. This is quite clearly an absolute and objective matter of fact to you. So, where's the faith in that? For if faith is involved as well as reason, then we're not dealing with an objective absolute any more, but just a personal conviction...

And of course human beings are fallible - that's a given. However, I suspect you'd number yourself amongst human beings, so more to the point, where's the possibility of your own fallibility in your belief sets? Apparently, there is no such possibility - the one true way has been revealed to you and quite literally any deviation in thinking from your beliefs is exactly that... a deviation from a universal truth. Such overweeningly superior absolutism is zealotry at best - and fanaticism at worst.

Some things can be argued, though - above all modern nonsense about traditional religious faith - which, to borrow from language popularly used against my position, arrogantly assumes that people who do NOT hold those views are rational and objective, while people who DO hold those views are irrational crackpots. (Not saying you're saying that, but a lot of people do - like the Fallen just did in essence).... I think some worldviews here (irrationally) MUST hold that I am, no matter what evidence is ever offered to the contrary - otherwise those worldviews are threatened. The safer thing for those people is to say that the believer is simply bigoted, prejudiced, and other rhetorical epithets.

That is a shameful (and so I'll hope unwitting) piece of moral hypocrisy. You just don't get it, do you? My world view happily allows for your own being absolutely valid... for you, just as mine is for me. Mine in no way whatsoever depends upon denying or rejecting yours. As I said in my earlier post, I would never dream of tearing into what you have come to believe is right... for you. Sadly, the converse is clearly not true. For your own belief set to remain valid, given that it deals in your having come to know universal and objective absolutes, it necessarily needs to condemn all other viewpoints as false and misled. No wonder you're so quick into the pulpit - you *have* to be.

If I could put things in one nutshell, I'd say that I have been on both sides of the fence - belief and unbelief - and most of those opposed to Christ really haven't.

Sorry, but the "I was blind, but now I see" claim adds no weight. I'm more than sure that you have had some sort of personal epiphany, no matter whether it was sudden or gradual. However, just because your own viewpoint has undergone an apparent dramatic u-turn shows nothing more than a capability of change. It's not in the least evidence of an evolution towards any greater degree of correctness. I also note with a smile the subliminal hope in your comment that those who don't share your opinion can't have walked a mile in believer's shoes - Heaven forbid that we possibly have.

I've calmly listened to and listed myself rational arguments against belief as a more-or-less intelligent unbeliever.... I don't see many here - any at all, really, with the possible exception of Ali - and I'm not at all sure how intelligent the (Christian) faith that she was in was - that have really been on the inside of intelligent faith.

You are kidding? Actually it's tragic that you almost certainly aren't. Of course I and anyone disagreeing with you must be less intelligent... because we cannot comprehend something that you know to be absolutely and universally objectively true. You even go so far as to claim that although Aliantha is a Christian, she must have attended the Church of the Terminally Thick and clearly hasn't undergone the intellectual rigours that you obviously have, solely because she's not 100% agreeing with you??? Truly shocking - both of those claims are trite, unbearably patronising and hideously arrogant - they're no more than blatantly specious self-supporting syllogisms. Let's hope they were unwittingly made too.

For my part, it appears that you are saying that your favorite believers are ones who are not at all sure of their beliefs, and above all, that their beliefs need mean nothing for others.

And now we have misrepresentation. No, to re-emphasise, the believers who I have the highest respect for are those who absolutely acknowledge the necessity of a purely personal faith (and don't just pay lip-service to it). They would never insist that they and only they have had the one true way revealed unto them and therefore that anyone not sharing their views was ignorant at best and damned at worst - to them, that would be both hubristic and presumptuous... ironically enough, the core sins that caused Lucifer's downfall, if I remember my Paradise Lost. To them, their beliefs are intensely personal and absolutely right... for them.

Rusmeister, I can admire your burning conviction. I can happily grant that your belief set is absolutely and incontrovertibly correct for you - that's a matter at least partly of personal faith, for all your own incontrovertibility and refusal to allow even the potential validity of any other points of view. What I find interesting is your denial of any notion of fallibility in your own viewpoint, although you are lightning-fast to point its potential out in others, whether it be intellectual fallibility, the fallibility of ignorance or just good old endemic human fallibility.

And what I find frankly distasteful is your absolutism - absolutism that claims to know the one true path (or uncontestably true knowledge of the objective and the universal) is an extremely dangerous thing. It's the sort of stance that has led to some of the worst excesses in human behaviour in our entire history. Without wishing to be emotive, I'm finding it very hard ethically to differentiate between your stance and that of a fundamentalist Taliban cleric looking to radicalise impressionable young Muslims. So although I know in advance it's a futile suggestion, by all means be absolutist, but please, be subjectively and personally so.

*** Added in an effort to be as clear as possible ***

Or to put it another way, how could I have any objection to your being a spokesperson for your own views as they apply to you and your life? However, when you adopt for yourself the mantle of spokesperson for the universe as a whole, or the role of evangelist of the only true truth, that's a different matter altogether.

[Fist and Faith]

You don't want to hear it - then don't engage me. Cail and I don't clash because we stay solidly out of each other's gardens.

You're in my garden. You're insisting that you know more about it than I do. The arrogance it takes to make such a claim - to outright say it - is extraordinary. Never in my life have or will I tell a Christian that I know better than him/her what it feels like to accept Jesus into my heart. To set yourself up as that kind of authority... Honestly, it's staggering. The statement is so absurd that I would normally be take it as a joke. But you've said it, and similar things, often enough that I know you do believe it.

Fist, you've basically described yourself as a materilaist. I say this is what materilaism is and what it leads to and you are outraged. You say you don't see thus-and-so - fine. I say I DO see it. I never make claims to know anything about your mind that you haven't directly told me, and I speak to the idea of materialism - that this life is all that there is. Nor do I claim personal authority when making claims of absolute truth, especially the kind that I don't think we can obtain on our own steam. I don't "set myself up as an authority" - unless the messenger is considered to "set himself up as authority". You can shoot the messenger, but he didn't originate the message, and more messengers will appear in different ways and forms even if you were rid of me. But you can't say that the messenger IS the authority.

What you seem to find offensive is the general claim that someone must be wrong - that not everybody can be right. And so you are outraged, staggered, beyond belief, etc.

It probably would be much better if we could fight a duel. Maybe someday you'll get over your barriers and read "The Ball and the Cross". You'd see that Turnbull gets treated with a good deal of dignity and sympathy; a pleasant surprise, even if the author doesn't agree with him. Not much has changed in a hundred years.

Again, I would never claim to have greater knowledge of what it's like for someone to accept Jesus into their heart than you have. It would be the same as you making the claim you're making. Nonsense. And how I could build my ego up to such a point is beyond me. It's incomprehensible to say I know from the outside what you know from the inside. It's possible to discuss it. To take guesses. To ask questions. But to dismiss the answers, claiming to know better without experiencing it, would be... Hard to know what word to fill in there.

Well, Murrin, I think you are right if you are saying that I insist that my faith cannot be "scientifically proven" - only no worldview can be.

My worldview says that gravity pulls things toward the earth at 9.8 meters/sec/sec. I'm pretty sure that can be scientifically proven. I'm pretty sure everything else in my worldview can be scientifically proven. Sunlight hits leaves, and, with a process called photosynthesis, leaves make food.

I have no reason to believe in your God, or that Jesus was anything more than a human being. There's no more need to scientifically prove that than there is to prove that I prefer Bach to Mozart.

If I could put things in one nutshell, I'd say that I have been on both sides of the fence - belief and unbelief - and most of those opposed to Christ really haven't.

(Personally, I don't oppose Christ. It sounds to me like he was a fantastic guy.) No, you have not been on the unbelief side of the fence. Your wants, needs, and fears require certain types of answers. Those answers are found in Christianity. Long ago, you had a problem with some of the specifics of the Christianity that you were taught. You could not accept that form of Christianity. You tried walking away from it. And you needed other things to try to fulfill those wants, needs, and fears. But they didn't work. And you kept returning to Christianity, because aspects of it did answer those things. You just had to find the version that didn't have the aspects that were so wrong for you.

Claiming to have been on the unbelief side is like me claiming to have been a Christian. I went to Sunday School for years as a kid. Then I "graduated" to regular church on Sundays. Obviously, I don't know about the deeper/finer points of Christianity, but I know some basics. Then, when I was maybe 10 or 11, I heard of atheism for the first time. Some atheist on tv said the only reason people believe in God is because they're afraid of going to Hell for not believing. I knew that wasn't the case. I'd surely not been taught by people like that. But the important part was that this was my first exposure to the concept that some people didn't believe what I'd been taught up until then. And, I realized I didn't believe it. I didn't feel anything of what I'd been taught. Not one shred of what I'd been taught resonated with me. I realized I just wasn't a believer.

It would be silly for me to say I was once a Christian. I never was. And you always were. Neither of us chose our worldviews. Neither of us could now choose the others. Our worldviews answer our questions.

[Avatar]

Excellent posts Murrin & TF.

--A

[rusmeister]

Excellent posts Murrin & TF.

--A

Of course, Av. If I had written them they would have sucked.


Like I've said, the grand thing is to praise the best of our opponents. It was a great attribute of GKC - and an incredibly rare one. It requires one to rise to a level that I only aspire to.

Of course, I keep pointing to people that are worth a hundred of me, and people keep saying, "We want to read YOU, and not dead people..."

It's never made any sense to me at all that a person's ideas become irrelevant when they die...

[rusmeister]

It would be silly for me to say I was once a Christian. I never was. And you always were. Neither of us chose our worldviews. Neither of us could now choose the others. Our worldviews answer our questions.

Now it's my turn to say "What staggering arrogance!" etc etc. How you could know that I was 'always' a Christian, when I openly rejected it for 20 adult years - and DIDN'T "keep returning"; didn't ever visit a church or open a Bible or seek out CS Lewis, etc - and had conscious reasoning behind doing so, is pretty amazing. I chose to become agnostic, and I chose to become Orthodox. So your understanding is mistaken, Fist.

I do not address every thought that you have because I don't know all of them. I only know the fraction that you have revealed here. Many of those thoughts, though, display rationalist materialism, and there is no arrogance in addressing THAT, which is what I have been doing. I don't need to have an enormous ego to tear down materialism. I would if I was claiming to know all of your thoughts, but I'm not (even though you consistently seem to think that I do). I try to keep my statements about what I do know, rather than what I don't know. I don't know what privilege materialism has that makes it more sacred and unquestionable than traditional Christianity.

When I say "opposed to Christ" I mean to what has been commonly presented over nearly all of Christian history for 2,000 years - that He is Lord and God incarnate in the flesh, whether you admit it or not. THAT is what you are opposed to - and that is what He claimed. The Trilemma is valid - He was either a liar, lunatic or Lord - "nice" or "fantastic guy" isn't in the options for people that have seriously considered His words in their entirety. "A great teacher who was also nutty as a fruitcake - the ultimate megalomaniac - just doesn't work.

[Cambo]

Well, Rus, you've accused me of being a materialist, which if you knew much about me at all...well, you'd know better. I assume that it was a misunderstanding of my views and not a misapprehension of what materialism really is (if for no other reason than that you insist you are knowledgeable about materialism). But my point is, the fact you could accuse both myself and Fist of being materialist, when our philosophies are so markedly different, makes it seem like it's your favourite byword for people who disagree with your Church. Similar, perhaps, to how some might wish to dismiss you as a "fundie" or some such.

As to your assertion that effectively no-one on the Watch understands you, because no-one has walked both sides of the path, so to speak...well, as TF already pointed out, it assumes no-one has actually made a transition from belief to atheism, for one thing. Although I suppose anyone who went from belief to atheism can't have come from an intelligent faith, huh? By the way, what would qualify as stupid faith? Anyway, I don't know about Ali, but I have. I was an atheist for several years, and an anti-theist and materialist to boot. Now I have faith. And I still disagree with you on most things. So...how does your experience make you any more likely to know objective truth than I? But of course, I'm one of the guys The Fallen likes, so I don't really believe in my belief as you do.

Why can't Christ have been a great teacher and a raving lunatic? Why doesn't that work? Delusions of grandeur do not preclude fine oratory skills or the ability to inspire people, in fact I can see how they could work out as a plus. Also, it's entirely possible all the Son of God stuff was added in by other people later. So it's not contradictory that people can still like parts of what Christ (apparently) stood for, and still not accept him as their Lord. Also, I'm sure I'm beating Fist to it, but there's a distinct difference between opposition and disbelief. You appear to be the only one here actively opposed to metaphysical ideas you don't believe.

[Fist and Faith]

No, rus, I understand your psychological state better than you do. You're too deeply entrenched in it (How could you not be?) to see it. And we all have tend toward self-deception at times. And it is undeniable that you did keep returning to Christianity. You're a Christian, aren't you?? Plus, you've said you kept going back to that priest, time and again, even though you thought he was wrong. You didn't think he was wrong. You thought he was right, but weren't yet able to disassociate the "wrong" stuff you'd been taught from "true" Christianity.

And I'm not opposed to what you believe about Christ. I simply don't have reason to believe it. I have no reason to believe there are not greater intelligences/beings than humans, I simply don't have reason to believe I've heard of any yet.

[TheFallen]

Excellent posts Murrin & TF.

--A

Of course, Av. If I had written them they would have sucked.

Like I've said, the grand thing is to praise the best of our opponents. It was a great attribute of GKC - and an incredibly rare one. It requires one to rise to a level that I only aspire to.

Of course, I keep pointing to people that are worth a hundred of me, and people keep saying, "We want to read YOU, and not dead people..."

It's never made any sense to me at all that a person's ideas become irrelevant when they die...

Rusmeister, you're now seemingly avoiding all the points I made by hiding behind a smokescreen apparently consisting of a semi-humorous persecution complex and complete misdirection.

Who's disagreeing with attempting to see the worthwhile in our opponents? Not I - though I'm obliged to point out that your very acknowledgement that there may be something worthwhile within your "opponents" and their ideas involuntarily evidences shades of grey in your world view, a thing which runs entirely counter to your much-vaunted black and white absolutist principles.

And who's disagreeing that anyone's ideas become irrelevant when they die? Our own temporally limited, subjective and personal meaning may have ended, but as Av and others have already clearly stated:-

But that doesn't mean that "meaning" doesn't go on. Hell, even your (or my) life can continue to have meaning after death. It'll just be its meaning to other people, not to us.

Leaving these obfuscations entirely to one side, I would be interested in any response to the issues I tried to make clear in my previous post. If it helps with clarity in any way, I can sum up my view of the position you've taken very simply.

Major Premise: There is a single absolute, objective and universal truth.

Minor Premise 1: Rusmeister has become aware of this single absolute, objective and universal truth.

Minor Premise 2: Due to the nature of "The Source" of this single absolute, objective and universal truth, it is not possible that Rusmeister is mistaken about it or has misinterpreted it in any way, despite his being subject to human fallibility.

Conclusion: Ergo, anyone who in any way disagrees with Rusmeister's world view must de facto be wrong. QED. Perfectly circularly self-supporting...

Alternatively, I absoutely acknowledge your continuing right to stick your fingers in your ears, shut your eyes and shout "La La La La" very loudly until I get bored and go away. If you choose this option, just to save time, I'll in advance happily acknowledge that you are indeed and in fact Spartacus...














...except so am I and so is everyone else.

[rusmeister]

No, rus, I understand your psychological state better than you do. You're too deeply entrenched in it (How could you not be?) to see it. And we all have tend toward self-deception at times. And it is undeniable that you did keep returning to Christianity. You're a Christian, aren't you?? Plus, you've said you kept going back to that priest, time and again, even though you thought he was wrong. You didn't think he was wrong. You thought he was right, but weren't yet able to disassociate the "wrong" stuff you'd been taught from "true" Christianity.

And I'm not opposed to what you believe about Christ. I simply don't have reason to believe it. I have no reason to believe there are not greater intelligences/beings than humans, I simply don't have reason to believe I've heard of any yet.

Hmmm. This looks like one of those baiting posts ("See? This is what YOU are doing!")

But as far as facts in my own life - which I think I can report with greater fidelity than you can - I returned to it once only - and for all - but certainly did not "keep" returning to it. I left the Baptists at the age of 18 going on 19 and didn't even BEGIN to think about considering faith as a serious option until my wife read me "The Screwtape Letters" when I was driving her around the Left Coast at the age of 35. And then I still back-burnered it until events began to force me to consider them more seriously. In the meantime my litany about various points the Baptists were wrong about (from "the King James Bible is the ONLY Bible" being sheer nonsense to the conclusion that a God that would create a ton of people knowing that only a small fraction would be "saved" was a pretty damned selfish God - most of which things I STILL agree with) was enough to convince me that religion was a thing for rubes.

When you read me saying that I went back to that priest, "keep" is not likely a word that I actually used, as I had only one private interview with Fr Viktor Sokolov, and even including my interviews with Fr Valerii and Fr Vyacheslav, when I wasn't as seriously interested, happened in the last year before my conversion. So the idea, if you seriously held it, that I "never let go of Christianity" has itself to be let go.

And I'd say that if you hold the stance that you have no reason to accept Christ as King and Lord of all, including you, then you are de facto opposed to it, just as you are opposed to the idea of taking the Tooth Fairy seriously as a minor deity who ought to be worshiped.

[Fist and Faith]

No, rus, you're still misunderstanding. Even if I don't know the details, they aren't important. One does not go from being a Christian; to not believing anything; then begin believing in, what a coincidence, Christianity. It doesn't matter how deeply you buried it, it was still there, and it came back out.

And I'd say that if you hold the stance that you have no reason to accept Christ as King and Lord of all, including you, then you are de facto opposed to it, just as you are opposed to the idea of taking the Tooth Fairy seriously as a minor deity who ought to be worshiped.

And what do you call someone who tries to turn people away from Christ? If I "oppose" Christ, what does that person do? Am I opposed to Salieri's music just because I don't listen to it, don't tell people to try it, and tell people about Bach?

[DukkhaWaynhim]

And I'd say that if you hold the stance that you have no reason to accept Christ as King and Lord of all, including you, then you are de facto opposed to it, just as you are opposed to the idea of taking the Tooth Fairy seriously as a minor deity who ought to be worshiped.

I would say that there is a difference between apathy and antipathy. Fist is unconcerned, i.e., he is apathetic, about Christ as King because he simply does not believe it to be true. However, that's different from actively opposing your belief because he believes it is in your (and his) best interest to spread his nonbelief. That would be antipathy.
You believe it is in his best interest to also believe as you do, so you oppose his viewpoints to remain in agreement with your worldview. Fist's worldview does not require active opposition, because it is not absolute, it allows for co-existence, as long as differing worldviews are similarly interested in coexistence.
Why should we consider premises that require firm foundation in absolutism, if we do not agree with an absolutist worldview? I assume your answer to that is that you are Right and we are wrong. I remain 100% unconvinced.

[aliantha]

The Fallen, at the risk of boring everybody else here: I grew up, well, let's call it undifferentiated Protestant. Got dragged to vacation bible school as a kid by Presbyterian and Baptist friends. Attended a bunch of different churches in my teens and early 20s, from Catholic to Lutheran to Methodist to Mormon. Seriously looked into becoming a Baha'i in my 20s. Was married in the Episcopal church at 27. Then I was agnostic for years. Joined a different Episcopal church when I was in my late 30s (I think); the kids and I were baptized there. Five or six years later, I became Neopagan, which is what I consider myself today, at the age of 52.

Which brings me to say, rus, that Fist may have a point. I suspect that your agnosticism -- like mine -- was mostly a reaction what you perceived as bullshit (not to put too fine a point on it ) in the Christian tradition you grew up with. Looking back on it today, in my agnostic period, I don't think I was rejecting God so much as I was unwilling to commit myself to what I saw as a humanly-flawed execution of His/Her intention.

You and I both searched for the church that came closest to God's original message. You found Orthodoxy -- which appeals to you, at least in part (as you've told us) because it broke off from Rome, and all the excesses and reforms that the Vatican spawned, very early on. I found Paganism, the roots of which predate Jesus. (Right, right, nobody today is doing exactly what prehistoric pagans did, and so on. But worship of the same gods/goddesses did occur.)

Fist, too, broke away from the church of his youth and has searched far and wide -- certainly farther and wider than *I* did -- for something to take its place. So far, nothing has resonated with him the way Orthodoxy does with you and Neopaganism does with me. (Altho I will say that I think his standards are kind of high. "If it's not impossible, it can't be a miracle" indeed! )

We're all searching. We're all looking for the thing that works for each of us. I'm cool with that.

[rusmeister]

What Fist wants to do is establish that I believe what I believe merely because I have a personal psychological need for it. I might as well say that Fist merely has a personal psychological need to establish that, not because there is any truth in his idea. So I 'get' Fist's point.

Yes, Ali, my leaving the Baptists WAS a reaction to BS. But it was NOT followed up - unlike you, who evidently continued to bounce around - by seeking and doubting. It was a period of nearly twenty years of apathy and indifference - which is the true opposite of love and a quite simple rejection of the Christian God (as I perceived Him, of course, but that was how I perceived Him - just as you reject Him now because of how you perceive Him, and you don't talk about how you have a buried desire to either return to or find Him again).

So Fist's point is simply, complexly, and in all ways not true. What I find especially interesting is how everybody jumps on the band wagon to support it, even though it is something definite that I know about myself and certainly know better than anyone else. It indicates to me that there really is a special hostility against Christianity - especially any kind like mine that insists it is true that doesn't exist against any other faith, even Islam.

I'm not really interested in fighting ten to one - that is, in trying to individually respond to the objections from the ten or so people on this thread opposed to my one - it's exhausting, it feels futile, and I do have a life. But since people are evidently willing to read pages and pages in considering this question, I'd rather people read someone much more intelligent than me. I don't know who knows anything about Spain in the 1930's; most have probably heard the name Franco. Here is an interesting commentary on it:

VI. THE CASE OF SPAIN

The point of the recent political story in Spain
has never been put clearly in the English papers;
perhaps not quite clearly even in the Catholic papers.
It is a very striking example of how the world has really moved,
since my own most important change of conviction occurred.
There is a paradox in every story of conversion; which is
perhaps the reason why the records of it are never ideally
satisfactory It is in its very nature the extinction of egoism:
and yet every account of it must sound egoistic.
It means, at least in the case of the Religion in question,
a recognition of reality which has nothing to do with relativity.
It is as if a man said, "This inn really exists, even if I
have never found it"; or, "My home is actually in this village;
and would be there, if I had never reached it."
It is the recognition that the truth is true, apart from
the truth-seeker; and yet the description must be the autobiography
of a truth-seeker; generally a rather depressing sort of person.
It will therefore sound egotistical, if I preface these remarks
by saying that I was for a long time a Liberal in the sense
of belonging to the Liberal Party. I am still a Liberal;
it is only the Liberal Party that has disappeared.
I understood its ideal to be that of equal citizenship and
personal freedom; and they are my own political ideals to this day.
The point here, however, is that I worked for a long time
with the practical organization of Liberalism; I wrote
for a great part of my life for the old Daily News;
and I knew of course that it identified political liberty,
rightly or wrongly, with representative government.
Then came the breach, on which I need not insist;
except by saying that I became quite convinced of two facts.
First, that representative government had ceased to
be representative. Second, that Parliament was in fact gravely
menaced by political corruption. Politicians did not represent
the populace, even the most noisy and vulgar of the populace.
Politicians did not deserve the dignified name of demagogues.
They deserved no name except perhaps the name of bagmen;
they were travelling for private firms. If they represented anything,
it was vested interests, vulgar but not even popular.

For this reason, when the Fascists' revolt appeared
in Italy, I could not be entirely hostile to it; for I knew
the hypocritical plutocracy against which it rebelled.
But neither could I be entirely friendly to it; for I believed
in the civic equality in which the politicians pretended to believe.
For the present purpose, the problem can be put very briefly.
The whole of the real case for Fascism can be put in two
words never printed in our newspapers: secret societies.
The whole case against Fascism could be put in one word now
never used and almost forgotten: legitimacy. For the first,
the Fascist was justified in smashing the politicians;
for their contract with the people was secretly contradicted
by their secret contracts with gangs and conspiracies.
For the second, Fascism could never be quite satisfactory;
for it did not rest on authority but only on power; which is
the weakest thing in the world. The Fascists said in effect,
"We may not be the majority, but we are the most vigorous
and intelligent minority." Which is simply challenging any
other intelligent minority to show that it is more vigorous.
It may well end in the very anarchy it attempted to avoid.
Compared with this, despotism and democracy are legitimate.
I mean there is no doubt about who is the King's eldest son
or about who has most votes in the most mechanical election.
But a mere competition of intelligent minorities is a rather
dreadful prospect. That, it seems to me, is a fair
statement of the case for and against the Fascist movement.
And now I should like to apply it to the curious case of Spain;
and note how Liberalism met the issue.

For weeks and months on end my old organ the Daily News
(now the News-Chronicle) had warned the public of all
these doubtful and dangerous implications of Fascism.
It had reviled Fascism for its vices; and rather more virulently
for its virtues. But anyhow it had furiously denounced the notion
of a minority imposing its will by mere violence, by weapons
or military training, in contempt of the constitutional democracy
in which the people expressed its will through Parliament.
I think there is a great deal to be said for that view;
especially in England, where Parliament is really normal
and national as it never was in Italy or Germany.
I could write much for and much against the Liberal theory
as enunciated in the News-Chronicle, And then, suddenly,
the whole case was thrown over, and turned upside down,
in face of the simple situation in Spain.

First it must be remembered that the Church is always in advance of
the world. That is why it is said to be behind the times. It discussed
everything so long ago that people have forgotten the discussion.
St. Thomas was an internationalist before all our internationalists;
St. Joan was a nationalist almost before there were nations;
Blessed Robert Bellarmine said all there is to be said for democracy
before any ordinary worldling dared to be a democrat; and (what is
to the purpose here) the Christian social reform was in full activity
before any of these quarrels of Fascists and Bolshevists appeared.
The Popular Party was working out the ideas of Leo XIII before a single
Blackshirt had been seen in Italy. The same popular ideals had been
moving in Spain; with the result that they had really become popular.
There were other complications, of course; the Court had never been
quite popular; the Dictatorship had not, I think, been imaginative
about the curious problem of Catalonia; but all this did not effect
the profound and popular Catholic change. The Pope particularly
insisted that he had no objection to the Republic as such;
there was no opposition to anything but to certain inhuman ideals,
by which men would lose humanity in losing personal liberty and property.
Well, in the perfectly fair and open intellectual interchange,
in which all Liberals are supposed to believe, the Catholic ideals won.
At an entirely peaceful and legal election, exactly like any
English election, a vast majority voted in various degrees for
the traditional truths, which had been normal to the Nation for much
more than a thousand years. Spain spoke; if indeed elections do speak;
and declared constitutionally against Communism, against Atheism,
against the negation that starved normality in our time.
Nobody said that this majority had been achieved by military violence.
Nobody pretended that an armed minority had imposed it on the State.
If the Liberal theory of Parliamentary majorities was just,
this was just. If the Parliamentary system was a popular system, this
was popular. And then the Socialists suddenly jumped up and did exactly
everything that the Fascists have been blamed for doing. They used
bombs and guns and instruments of violence to prevent the fulfilment
of the will of the people, or at least of the will of the Parliament.
Having lost the game by the rules of democracy, they tried to win it
after all entirely by the rules of war; in this case of Civil War.
They tried to overthrow a pacific Parliament by a militarist coup
d'état. In short, they behaved exactly like Mussolini; or rather
they did the very worst that has ever been attributed to Mussolini;
and without a rag of his theoretical excuse.

And what did Liberalism say? What did my dear old friends
of liberty and peaceful citizenship say? Naturally, I assumed
on opening the paper that it would rally to the defence of
Parliament and peaceful representative government and rebuke
the attempt to make a minority dominant by mere military violence.
Judge of my astonishment, when I found Liberals lamenting aloud
over the unfortunate failure of these Socialistic Fascists
to reverse the result of a General Election. I had been
a Liberal in the old Liberal days; we were not unacquainted
with Tory and Unionist victories at the polls; we had often gone
contentedly into Opposition. It had never been suggested that
when Balfour or Baldwin constitutionally became Prime Ministers,
all the Nonconformists should go out with guns and bayonets
to reverse the popular vote; or the Leader of the Opposition
begin to throw dynamite at the elected Leader of the House.
The only inference was that Liberalism was only opposed
to militarists when they were Fascists; and entirely approved
of Fascists so long as they were Socialists.

Now that is a small and purely political point.
But to me it was very awakening. It showed me quite clearly
the fundamental truth of the modern world. And that is this:
there are no Fascists; there are no Socialists;
there are no Liberals; there are no Parliamentarians.
There is the one supremely inspiring and irritating
institution in the world; and there are its enemies.
Its enemies are ready to be for violence or against violence,
for liberty or against liberty, for representation or
against representation; and even for peace or against peace.
It gave me an entirely new certainty, even in the practical
and political sense, that I had chosen well.

To this I will add a short two podcast series by Steve Robinson about relativism; "What works for you":
ancientfaith.com/podcasts/stevethebuilder/philosophical_ketchup
ancientfaith.com/podcasts/stevethebuilder/philosophical_ketchup_part_two

Please not that the transcripts are on the pages for those unable or unwilling to listen - listening is better, though - it gives you things like tone of voice that prevent certain kinds of misunderstandings from arising, like the kind that ascribes arrogance to me that I think comes, from a great extent to not hearing my voice or seeing my face/body language - messages not intended that are read into naked text.

Someone else who I think wiser than I, and therefore more worth listening to.

[Fist and Faith]

So Fist's point is simply, complexly, and in all ways not true. What I find especially interesting is how everybody jumps on the band wagon to support it, even though it is something definite that I know about myself and certainly know better than anyone else. It indicates to me that there really is a special hostility against Christianity - especially any kind like mine that insists it is true that doesn't exist against any other faith, even Islam.

Aside from you, nobody of any worldview comes here and continually tells everybody else they're wrong about thier worldview, and that they know those worldviews better than those who hold them. Everybody else largely says, "I believe ___." You began your posting here, and continue to this day, saying little of, "I believe ___.", and lots of, "You are wrong." That's the bandwagon everybody's jumping on. I find it especially interesting that you refuse to acknowledge your role in the prevalent attitude here toward you, and try to make everybody out to be opposed to Christianity, or truth, or reason, instead.

[rusmeister]

So Fist's point is simply, complexly, and in all ways not true. What I find especially interesting is how everybody jumps on the band wagon to support it, even though it is something definite that I know about myself and certainly know better than anyone else. It indicates to me that there really is a special hostility against Christianity - especially any kind like mine that insists it is true that doesn't exist against any other faith, even Islam.

Aside from you, nobody of any worldview comes here and continually tells everybody else they're wrong about thier worldview, and that they know those worldviews better than those who hold them. Everybody else largely says, "I believe ___." You began your posting here, and continue to this day, saying little of, "I believe ___.", and lots of, "You are wrong." That's the bandwagon everybody's jumping on. I find it especially interesting that you refuse to acknowledge your role in the prevalent attitude here toward you, and try to make everybody out to be opposed to Christianity, or truth, or reason, instead.

Fist, the idea that a particular view is actually true - and others actually false - is always opposed to the idea that no one idea actually is and/or that it does not matter. If materialism is true, then Ali's belief in many gods as the ultimate truth, and mine in Christ as the Way, the Truth and the Life, are false. If Ali's is true, then mine is false - and so is yours, your not having seen evidence of it notwithstanding. if mine is true, etc...
If my view is THE Truth, then what I have said, in general, follows. It is not arrogance anymore than Galileo insisting on a heliocentric solar system was arrogance. We disagree on what is true. That is all. That is what all threads, all conflicts, all disagreements come down to.

As to band wagon, I meant the one where people support you in saying that you have clearer knowledge of my motivations and feelings than I do - one no one would accept about themselves, but which there is evidently no problem in doing so if it is aimed in my direction. It is not logical - but it IS human.