The fall of Christianity in USA

[URAVIP2ME]

The problem with discussing free will is there is no consensus definition of free will.....................
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9;
19Though I am free of obligation to anyone, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), to win those under the law. 21To those without the law I became like one without the law (though I am not outside the law of God but am under the law of Christ), to win those without the law. 22To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.
Faith is a form of free will for the ego. However, this is not easy since the choices that need to be made, may have a social cost that many are not willing to pay. Paul was killed for his free choice.

If faith (confidence in God's Word) is a form of free will for the ego, then to me that does Not seem to agree with Philippians 2:3-4.
A person with faith would do Nothing out of contentiousness or out of vainglory (ego) but in humility let each one regard the others as his superiors...
That to me is in harmony with Romans 15:1-3 to Not please self...... honor others - Romans 12:10
Yes, being a Christians involves risk ( social cost ) or the taking of what the world considers as taking the safe side.
Paul's risk to me was Not missing the point but belief in the resurrection hope for the dead.
The very core reason of Ephesians 1:7-10

 

[URAVIP2ME]

You can repeat the opinion of your teacher all you want, that still has nothing to do with my original statement that you replied to.
As to your references of:
Matthew
24-for there shall arise false christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
Luke
21 -And the people waited for Zacharias, and marvelled that he tarried so long in the temple.
What does THAT have to do with anything ANYONE posted here?

Matthew Chapter 24 is the composite ' sign ' that Jesus gave for the year 70 ( when Jerusalem was destroyed ) and larger fulfillment for our day or time frame.
Luke Chapter 21 is also in parallel to Matthew Chapter 24. I find the verse at Luke 21:11 to be compatible with our day.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

But lofty concepts of Gods of the universe and philosophy don't get us to pagan savior gods merged with the Israelite myths.
Free will is in scripture because as OT Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulo points out concepts in the Persian religion were introduced into the OT during the 300 year occupation. 4) Free Will
Zoroastrians and Christians both focus on the importance of individual to choose between good and evil. Although they both believe that the God is only good and is predestined to prevail over the evil, both Zoroastrian and Christian Gods bestow free will to human beings.
Zoroastrians believe that from the lowest level of ox to the highest level of Ahura Mazda, every single being has to make the choice between the Truth and the Lie. Christians, on the other hand, believe that this blessed free will is only attributed to human beings.
Early Zoroastrianism
Historical features of Zoroastrianism, such as messianism, judgment after death, heaven and hell, and free will may have influenced other religious and philosophical systems, including Second Temple Judaism, Gnosticism, Greek philosophy,[7] Christianity, Islam,[8] the Baháʼí Faith, and Buddhism.[
This is from Mary Boyce who spent much of her academic life studying with modern Zoroastrian groups and updating our knowledge.

Even before the 300 years, we find as the pagan people migrated away from ancient Babylon took with them their religious practices and ideas spread them world wide into a greater religious Babylon or Babylon the Great.
This is why I find we see so many similar or overlapping religious-myth ideas spread throughout the world today.
Yes, free-will choices are for humans. For humans do voluntary choices - Leviticus 1:3; Leviticus 7:16; Leviticus 22:18-19
Willing choices - Exodus 35:21-22,26,29

 

[blü 2]

Please back up to Genesis 2:17 because it shows that enemy death would only enter the earthly scene by breaking God's Law.

"But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it you shall die" is a warning, not a command. It does NOT say "You shall not eat of it because I said so" for example. And as the snake pointed out, "You shall not die" (the same day as a result of eating it).

Nor is that the reason God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden. As I quoted to you, God expelled them for one and one only reason, to stop them becoming immortal by eating from the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:22-3).

Not to eat from God's forbidden tree was as if there was a No trespassing sign on it.

No, a "WARNING: POISONOUS TREE" sign on it.

God's purpose ( His will ) is stated at Genesis 1:28 the reward would be Earth, enjoy endless life on Earth.

NOWHERE does it say God intended endless life. INSTEAD they get kicked out of the Garden to STOP them getting endless life.

To trespass or break God's Law carried with it the death penalty. No judgement after death because death itself was the penalty.

The story says nothing of the kind.

Nor was it possible for Eve or Adam to sin, since God had denied them knowledge of good and evil, and therefore neither of them, at the time they ate the fruit, was capable of forming the intention to do wrong / to sin.

God is Not omnipotent because there are things God can Not do. For example: God can Not lie - Titus 1:2.

Titus is in error, and directly contradicted by the bible ─

1 Kings 22:23 Now, therefore, behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has spoken evil concerning you.”

2 Chronicles 18:22 Now therefore, behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of these your prophets; the Lord has spoken evil concerning you.

Jeremiah 4:10 ... “Ah, Lord GOD! surely thou hast utterly deceived this people and Jerusalem ...”

Jeremiah 20:7 O Lord, thou hast deceived me, / and I was deceived;

Ezekiel 14:9 And if the prophet be deceived and speak a word, I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet

2 Thessalonians 2:11 Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false.​

Because of the gift of free-will choices, God does Not make us do anything we don't want to do, God does Not make us obey Him.

Then we agree that God is neither omnipotent, nor omniscient, nor perfect, right?

 

[Ancient Soul]

You can repeat the opinion of your teacher all you want, that still has nothing to do with my original statement that you replied to.

As to your references of:

Matthew
24-for there shall arise false christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.

Luke
21 -And the people waited for Zacharias, and marvelled that he tarried so long in the temple.

What does THAT have to do with anything ANYONE posted here?

Matthew Chapter 24 is the composite ' sign ' that Jesus gave for the year 70 ( when Jerusalem was destroyed ) and larger fulfillment for our day or time frame.
Luke Chapter 21 is also in parallel to Matthew Chapter 24. I find the verse at Luke 21:11 to be compatible with our day.

Are you serious???!!!

Again:

Matthew
24-for there shall arise false christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.

There is nothing even mentioned about anything specific enough to back up your claim. That verse has no such "sign" about any yea, time period, or destruction of anything.

And make up your mind, is it Luke or Matthew 21?

Regardless, I'll play along:

Matthew
21- Jesus answered and said unto them, verily i say unto you, if ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.

Still, NOTHING there that even remotely implies any time period and doesn't even have the slightest context to your claim.

 

[halbhh]

God perfectly knows all the future because God is omnipotent, omniscient...
...IF god is omni THEN God knows all the past, all the present and all the future. The only way for God not to know every detail is for God willfully to maim [his] own omniscience...

mmmm....

For me, personally, thinking of it that way would be akin/similar to unlearning/throwing out what I know about how gravity works in General Relativity and only relying on the more simple basic ideas of the older theory of Newtonian gravity.

Newtonian gravity wasn't entirely wrong. It was just incomplete.

For me going back to the old-fashioned, and simpler ideas of the older theories....would be...unlearning stuff I know.

It would not be entirely wrong, but....it would be losing precision and detail and key understanding that helps paint a more accurate picture.

So....

About the scriptural side of it -- God seems to have intentionally made us truly unpredictable, and this much better fits scripture than us being entirely predictable. This is another situation where I've learned more on this question (read fully all the books in the common bible), and can't really go backward to the less accurate older simple ideas of the past. Live and learn, as it were.

 

[halbhh]

Determinism ended in science in the early 1900s with quantum mechanics. Nothing can be determined past a certain point. The universe is only probabilistic. No spirit is needed for freewill.
But lofty concepts of Gods of the universe and philosophy don't get us to pagan savior gods merged with the Israelite myths.


Free will is in scripture because as OT Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulo points out concepts in the Persian religion were introduced into the OT during the 300 year occupation.


4) Free Will

Zoroastrians and Christians both focus on the importance of individual to choose between good and evil. Although they both believe that the God is only good and is predestined to prevail over the evil, both Zoroastrian and Christian Gods bestow free will to human beings.

Zoroastrians believe that from the lowest level of ox to the highest level of Ahura Mazda, every single being has to make the choice between the Truth and the Lie. Christians, on the other hand, believe that this blessed free will is only attributed to human beings.
Early Zoroastrianism


Historical features of Zoroastrianism, such as messianism, judgment after death, heaven and hell, and free will may have influenced other religious and philosophical systems, including Second Temple Judaism, Gnosticism, Greek philosophy,[7] Christianity, Islam,[8] the Baháʼí Faith, and Buddhism.[

This is from Mary Boyce who spent much of her academic life studying with modern Zoroastrian groups and updating our knowledge.

Thanks, that's old ground to me. One of the fun and fascinating things about religion is that people from around many parts of the world have over time sought the ineffable, and we can easily see that often they have only gotten part of the way there.

But, on the other hand, it appears that some have gotten some of the way there (instead of none of the way).

One way you can learn about which myths and beliefs work better to help people find the subtle or ineffable is to consider which endure.

And spread.

Just like in all areas of life, what is false fades out.

False ideas die out. In time.

But what is true recurs and spreads, and lasts. It crosses borders without effort.

 

[blü 2]

mmmm....

For me, personally, thinking of it that way would be akin/similar to unlearning/throwing out what I know about how gravity works in General Relativity and only relying on the more simple basic ideas of the older theory of Newtonian gravity.

To me, all these questions and consequences about gods with omni powers are clear as day, part of the observation that in reality there are no absolute statements about anything.

Another example which I've come across occasionally is the claim that there are absolute moral statements. None of the proponents of that idea was able to put an example of an absolute moral statement on the table, which strikes me as odd.

And a related claim is that 'good' means 'whatever God likes, says or does'. Apart from Plato's Euthyphro problem, the bible attributes to the Abrahamic God acts that by my moral standards are appalling ─ the Flood, human sacrifice, massacre of populations, murderous religious prejudice, mass rape, and more.

We acquire our morality partly from our genes, which provide us with moral tendencies, empathy and a conscience, and partly from our upbringing, culture, education and experience. And against that background, 'good' is what benefits me, my family, my group and the causes I like, while 'bad' is what disadvantages me and them. Hence all morality is relative and no other definition makes sense, whether in theory or in practice.

No absolutes, no omnis, no infinities, anywhere in reality.

 

[halbhh]

To me, all these questions and consequences about gods with omni powers are clear as day, part of the observation that in reality there are no absolute statements about anything.

Another example which I've come across occasionally is the claim that there are absolute moral statements. None of the proponents of that idea was able to put an example of an absolute moral statement on the table, which strikes me as odd.

And a related claim is that 'good' means 'whatever God likes, says or does'. Apart from Plato's Euthyphro problem, the bible attributes to the Abrahamic God acts that by my moral standards are appalling ─ the Flood, human sacrifice, massacre of populations, murderous religious prejudice, mass rape, and more.

We acquire our morality partly from our genes, which provide us with moral tendencies, empathy and a conscience, and partly from our upbringing, culture, education and experience. And against that background, 'good' is what benefits me, my family, my group and the causes I like, while 'bad' is what disadvantages me and them. Hence all morality is relative and no other definition makes sense, whether in theory or in practice.

No absolutes, no omnis, no infinities, anywhere in reality.

I noticed that after you said there were no "example of an absolute moral statement", you quite reasonably then went ahead, just like me, and defined a practical morality: "'good' is what benefits me, my family, my group". Which is simply a definitional kind of thing. If a person uses the word "good", we should wonder what they mean, and getting a definition is necessary and helpful.

Much less clear or certain to me is what you mean precisely by saying: "there are no absolute statements about anything". It's quite clear for me what I'd mean if I said that, but I realize I'm not completely sure what you mean by saying it.

E.g., the way I use words, one plus one equal two is absolutely true in a pure number way (as a dimensionless number). Perhaps clear to anyone else joining us in this post is to point out the statement: "The sun exists" is by my way of using words an 'absolute statement' that is true -- I mean it is true regardless of whether we know it, or whether or not any of us exist, and so on.

So, there's already a simple instance of an absolute statement that is true, to my way of using words. Of course it's far more involved to consider a moral statement that could be 'absolutely true' (or if instead you just use the sole adjective 'absolute' by itself then I'm not sure precisely what you mean to say yet).

 

[blü 2]

I noticed that after you said there were no "example of an absolute moral statement", you quite reasonably then went ahead, just like me, and defined a practical morality: "'good' is what benefits me, my family, my group". Which is simply a definitional kind of thing. If a person uses the word "good", we should wonder what they mean, and getting a definition is necessary and helpful.

Just to be overabundantly clear, 'good' in my view includes (a) 'favorable to causes I like' and (b) exists in the setting provided by our evolved moral tendencies, and our learnt morality and our evolved conscience and capacity for empathy. We've evolved as gregarious primates and get enormous benefits from cooperation, so we've evolved instincts that support living in cooperative groups.

Much less clear or certain to me is what you mean precisely by saying: "there are no absolute statements about anything". It's quite clear for me what I'd mean if I said that, but I realize I'm not completely sure what you mean by saying it .

E.g., the way I use words, one plus one equal two is absolutely true in a pure number way (as a dimensionless number). Perhaps clear to anyone else joining us in this post is to point out the statement: "The sun exists" is by my way of using words an 'absolute statement' that is true -- I mean it is true regardless of whether we know it, or whether or not any of us exist, and so on.

'One and one is two' is not an absolute statement. For example, take a pint measure and a pot that holds 1½ pints. Fill the pint measure and pour it into the pot once, twice. 1+1=1½ pints, not 2.

Maths is purely conceptual. There is no real thing "2", for example, only what we deem to be instantiations of two ─ two birds, two pages, two bathrooms, two holidays. And each of those is entirely the result of a human judgment ─ first the human decides what to count ─ pages, say ─ and the field in which it is to be counted ─ the first edition of Moby Dick, say. No brain present, no concept of counting hence no counting. (We can also count things that are entirely conceptual ─ 1 +1 = 2, for instance, or 'two miscarriages of justice' &c.)

So the closest we can come to an absolute statement is something like, "Certain conceptual systems such as maths define rules and procedures for the employment and manipulation of abstract quantities, such that an operation correctly employing the rules and procedures will result in an answer which according to the particular system is correct." (That might benefit from polishing, but you get the idea.)

So, there's already a simple instance of an absolute statement that is true,

See above.

Of course it's far more involved to consider a moral statement that could be 'absolutely true' (or if instead you just use the sole adjective 'absolute' by itself then I'm not sure precisely what you mean to say yet).

In one discussion about whether morality is absolute or relative, the statement "Rape is always wrong" was offered as an absolute. There are several reasons why it's not. One is that forced copulation is found in various species in nature ─ some varieties of ducks are notorious for it (or what looks very much like it). Another is the argument that directly brings relativity into it: unless X rapes A in the next 30 minutes, I will set off this hydrogen bomb hidden in the center of New York City.

 

[joelr]

Thanks, that's old ground to me. One of the fun and fascinating things about religion is that people from around many parts of the world have over time sought the ineffable, and we can easily see that often they have only gotten part of the way there.

But, on the other hand, it appears that some have gotten some of the way there (instead of none of the way).

The assumption that the obvious sources of Christian myths were "some of the way there" is completely unfounded. The ineffable has nothing to do with angry Gods who preach hatred for non-belief, eternal hell, Persian concepts about hell and a bad demon who hates humanity, and the world ending in fire with giant monsters eating people. Christian mythology does not express the ineffable any more than Lord of the Rings. It's fiction.

Justin Martyr already said in 1AD that yes Jesus is just like all the Pagan versions, but this version is the correct one. This no longer is supported by evidence. It's a personal belief based on no good evidence.

One way you can learn about which myths and beliefs work better to help people find the subtle or ineffable is to consider which endure.

And spread.

Just like in all areas of life, what is false fades out.

False ideas die out. In time.

But what is true recurs and spreads, and lasts. It crosses borders without effort.

So Hinduism is the most true religion?

You do not seem to understand mythology. While it does present people with a sense of the ineffable as well as ways to live stages of life properly it does not claim the stories are ever literally true.
Only misunderstandings cause that.
Joseph Campbell said: myths = other peoples religions.
religion = misunderstood myths
The master of comparitive mythology says in Christianity people misunderstand poetry for prose.

In 2050 Islam will outnumber Christianity. Will you still apply the rule of endurance then? Or will that no longer be a way to judge truth?

 

[joelr]

Even before the 300 years, we find as the pagan people migrated away from ancient Babylon took with them their religious practices and ideas spread them world wide into a greater religious Babylon or Babylon the Great.
This is why I find we see so many similar or overlapping religious-myth ideas spread throughout the world today.
Yes, free-will choices are for humans. For humans do voluntary choices - Leviticus 1:3; Leviticus 7:16; Leviticus 22:18-19
Willing choices - Exodus 35:21-22,26,29

Yes the Persian myths were added in those 300 years but the OT is full of older stories borrowed and changed slightly. Noah's Ark is a direct copy of the Epic of Gilamesh. Much must have come from the Canaanites because Yahweh was originally paired up with Ashera a Canaanite Goddess.

But the Persian religion really was a stronger source than people realize. Adam and Eve, a messiah, God vs Satan, the apocalypse, many concepts that were exciting to people were added by "prophets" during that time.
Also one of the Persian kings treated the Israelites well and was well liked by them. Mary Boyce speaks about this in her work.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

"But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it you shall die" is a warning, not a command. It does NOT say "You shall not eat of it because I said so" for example. And as the snake pointed out, "You shall not die" (the same day as a result of eating it).
Nor is that the reason God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden. As I quoted to you, God expelled them for one and one only reason, to stop them becoming immortal by eating from the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:22-3).
No, a "WARNING: POISONOUS TREE" sign on it.
NOWHERE does it say God intended endless life. INSTEAD they get kicked out of the Garden to STOP them getting endless life.
The story says nothing of the kind.
Nor was it possible for Eve or Adam to sin, since God had denied them knowledge of good and evil, and therefore neither of them, at the time they ate the fruit, was capable of forming the intention to do wrong / to sin.
Titus is in error, and directly contradicted by the bible ─

1 Kings 22:23 Now, therefore, behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has spoken evil concerning you.”
2 Chronicles 18:22 Now therefore, behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of these your prophets; the Lord has spoken evil concerning you.
Jeremiah 4:10 ... “Ah, Lord GOD! surely thou hast utterly deceived this people and Jerusalem ...”
Jeremiah 20:7 O Lord, thou hast deceived me, / and I was deceived;
Ezekiel 14:9 And if the prophet be deceived and speak a word, I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet
2 Thessalonians 2:11 Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false.​

Then we agree that God is neither omnipotent, nor omniscient, nor perfect, right?

I can say that the words ' do Not eat ' is a law (of the land of Eden) because eating carried with it the death penalty - Genesis 2:17
There is Nothing in Scripture saying the forbidden tree was a poisonous tree.
Consider this:
Suppose you had a generous neighbor with many fruit trees.
Let's suppose one tree type was the orange tree.
Out of all the orange trees the neighbor picked out just one orange tree for himself.
That would Not make the other orange trees to be poisonous.
Adam's sin introduced death to humanity.
Jesus' ransom introduced life to humanity.
So, unlike for Adam and Eve and the willfully wicked, the majority of mankind can have a resurrection back to live life again.
Only some resurrected to heavenly life, the majority to have a happy-and-healthy physical resurrection.
That healthy physical resurrection can lead to 'everlasting life on Earth' as originally offered to Adam before his chosen downfall.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

Yes the Persian myths were added in those 300 years but the OT is full of older stories borrowed and changed slightly. Noah's Ark is a direct copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh. ..............

Yes, there are common threads in mythology including the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh, as well as myths of other cultures: Egypt, China, the Aztechs, Maya, etc.
Threads tracing back to ancient Babylon, Not Persia.
Gilgamesh finds that Utnapishtim tells him the Flood story ( Epic table XI known as the Flood table ) Flood story is first.
The overall message message of the Epic is sadness and frustration of death and the hereafter.
Whereas, the biblcial Flood message is one of hope and the gaining of eternal life via a resurrection.

Ancient Babylon was the Mesopotamian cradle of most of the world's religions.
This is why we see so many similar or overlapping religious-myth concepts and teachings throughout the world today.
As the people migrated away from ancient Babylon they took with them their religious myths and ideas and spread them world wide into a greater religious Babylon or Babylon the Great,.

 

[blü 2]

I can say that the words ' do Not eat ' is a law (of the land of Eden) because eating carried with it the death penalty - Genesis 2:17

Non sequitur. The poison sign on your jar of cyanide, or the beware sign near the cliff edge are not law but warnings.

"Do not eat the fruit BECAUSE if you do you'll die the same day", and not "Do not eat the fruit BECAUSE I said so".

There is Nothing in Scripture saying the forbidden tree was a poisonous tree.

Nor was it. God misspoke, while the snake said nothing but the truth.

The reason God misspoke is not expressly stated, but certain inferences are possible from God's stated reason for pitching Adam and Eve out of the Garden ─ Genesis 3:22-23 makes it clear God had a policy of keeping Adam and Eve in ignorance to stop them becoming his rivals. (That's the same reason God kicked over the Tower of Babel, you'll recall.)

Suppose you had a generous neighbor with many fruit trees.
Let's suppose one tree type was the orange tree.
Out of all the orange trees the neighbor picked out just one orange tree for himself.
That would Not make the other orange trees to be poisonous.
Adam's sin introduced death to humanity.

First, the text never even once mentions sin, original sin, the Fall of Man, death entering the world, spiritual death or the need for a redeemer. ALL of those are attempts at an ill-fitting retrofit from the late second century BCE, mentioned once by Paul, and turned into a Big Deal by Augustine of Hippo c. 400 CE.

Second, at the time they respectively ate the fruit, each of Eve and Adam was incapable of sin BECAUSE God had deliberately deprived them of the knowledge of good and evil so they were each incapable of forming the intention to sin.

So, unlike for Adam and Eve and the willfully wicked

If you intend to include Adam and Eve among the willfully wicked, then as I said, the Garden story rules out 'willful' by making it clear they, through no fault of their own, had no knowledge of good and evil.

That healthy physical resurrection can lead to 'everlasting life on Earth' as originally offered to Adam before his chosen downfall.

The story NEVER ONCE suggests that Adam and Eve were created immortal. INSTEAD they have to eat from the Tree of Life to become immortal and God kicks them out of Eden to prevent exactly and expressly and unambiguously THAT.

NOWHERE in the story does it mention death entering the world. Please read the plain words of Genesis 2 & 3, and stop wishing meanings on the story that simply are not there.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

The words of Genesis 2:7 are there.
Mortals Adam and Eve were never offered to become immortal but could have everlasting life on Earth.
The immortal are self contained and can Not die.
Adam and Eve had to eat and breath etc. in order to keep on living.

 

[halbhh]

Just to be overabundantly clear, 'good' in my view includes (a) 'favorable to causes I like' and (b) exists in the setting provided by our evolved moral tendencies, and our learnt morality and our evolved conscience and capacity for empathy. We've evolved as gregarious primates and get enormous benefits from cooperation, so we've evolved instincts that support living in cooperative groups.
'One and one is two' is not an absolute statement. For example, take a pint measure and a pot that holds 1½ pints. Fill the pint measure and pour it into the pot once, twice. 1+1=1½ pints, not 2.

Hence:

pure number way (as a dimensionless number)

Is it more clear now on 2nd reading? (volume has dimension, and therefore isn't dimensionless)

Maths is purely conceptual. There is no real thing "2", for example, only what we deem to be instantiations of two ─ two birds, two pages, two bathrooms, two holidays. And each of those is entirely the result of a human judgment ─ first the human decides what to count ─ pages, say ─ and the field in which it is to be counted ─ the first edition of Moby Dick, say. No brain present, no concept of counting hence no counting. (We can also count things that are entirely conceptual ─ 1 +1 = 2, for instance, or 'two miscarriages of justice' &c.)

heh. I will avoid using 'pure' number in talking with you, since your conceptions about number are evidently not at all the same as mine. (Mine were formed in part in a math-for-majors class in college, and might seem alien to some.)

Best to use other examples.

Such as this:

"The sun exists" is by my way of using words an 'absolute statement' that is true -- I mean it is true regardless of whether we know it, or whether or not any of us exist, and so on.

So, for the benefit of discussion, I offer this instance: that the sun exists even if we don't exist to think/know or perceive it, and so on.

That is, 'the sun exists' in a way that is fully independent of us, and entirely apart from our conception and such. It remains consistent in certain ways (such as warming the Earth, driving photosynthesis and so on), ways that we can try to conceive of, but that happened before we attempted to understand.

That is, an objective reality exists, and gradually over time we attempt to observe and to better and better represent that absolute reality in our conceptions.

 

[halbhh]

The assumption that the obvious sources of Christian myths were "some of the way there" is completely unfounded. The ineffable has nothing to do with angry Gods who preach hatred for non-belief, eternal hell, Persian concepts about hell and a bad demon who hates humanity, and the world ending in fire with giant monsters eating people. Christian mythology does not express the ineffable any more than Lord of the Rings. It's fiction.

Justin Martyr already said in 1AD that yes Jesus is just like all the Pagan versions, but this version is the correct one. This no longer is supported by evidence. It's a personal belief based on no good evidence.





So Hinduism is the most true religion?

You do not seem to understand mythology. While it does present people with a sense of the ineffable as well as ways to live stages of life properly it does not claim the stories are ever literally true.
Only misunderstandings cause that.
Joseph Campbell said: myths = other peoples religions.
religion = misunderstood myths
The master of comparitive mythology says in Christianity people misunderstand poetry for prose.

In 2050 Islam will outnumber Christianity. Will you still apply the rule of endurance then? Or will that no longer be a way to judge truth?

Do you think, reflecting on your own view, that it might be a little too ideological? (too rigid and insistent on fitting things into little boxes they don't really fit that well in)

 

[blü 2]

heh. I will avoid using 'pure' number in talking with you, since your conceptions about number are evidently not at all the same as mine. (Mine were formed in part in a math-for-majors class in college, and might seem alien to some.)

What, mathematical platonism? Away, fiend! (Points hand with index and pinkie extended and middle and ring tucked under.)

So, for the benefit of discussion, I offer this instance: that the sun exists even if we don't exist to think/know or perceive it, and so on.

Yes, I agree that statement is true, in that it corresponds with our perception of reality. The sun has objective existence, and doesn't exist solely as a concept in a brain.

That is, an objective reality exists

D'accord, although neither of us can demonstrate that it's true a world exists external to the self without first assuming that it's true. Again, we can't show that our senses are capable of informing us about that world without first assuming they are, so we have to assume further that they are. And yet again, we can't use reason to show reason is a valid tool so we have to assume it is, too.

So we agree BECAUSE we share those assumptions.

What if they're wrong?

So "the sun exists" is a true statement but not an absolute one.

(Other unfalsifiable possibilities also have to be falsified before any claim of absoluteness can be progressed: that we and the sun are but dreams in the mind of a superior being, or elements in a superbeing's tron game. And so on.

, and gradually over time we attempt to observe and to better and better represent that absolute reality in our conceptions.

Better and better, the idea of progress, yes, completely agree. BUT no absolute statements.

Did I already ask you how God knows [he]'s omniscient? How does [he] know there's nothing [he] doesn't know [he] doesn't know?

 

[halbhh]

Did I already ask you how God knows [he]'s omniscient? How does [he] know there's nothing [he] doesn't know [he] doesn't know?

First an important delimit: My understanding from the scriptures is that we cannot know all about God, are not capable (yet) of such, but can only know some things at most -- things revealed to us, that is in scripture.

Thus we have the implication we can't necessarily answer all such questions, but there is something here though we can answer: God isn't subject to, contained in, under, only of...nature.

Instead of being of nature, contained and subject to nature, we think it's the other way around, as He originated nature in some way.

A commonplace assumption (erroneous; but often assumed without being aware of even making the assumption) is the idea that God would have to be natural.

Of nature. Then subject to nature/physics.

I'm pointing out that typical natural assumption appears entirely contrary to what we know in scripture. God not only creates nature, but more than just occasionally in scripture alters the normal rules of nature in ways that seem simply naturally impossible. Ergo, He is above nature. Nature is subject to Him.