Religious inconsistency question

[Paul98]

I did for one. I will not for all the ones you think are failed. It won't change your mind regardless of what I offer. Nor will you change mine. I can no more turn from God than you can turn from your self as ultimate it appears. But I won't give up, just pursue your salvation via other means.

I would like to know how you think that prophecy is not a failed prophecy.

So why are you here? I would be perfectly happy having my mind changed if you could show me that these in fact came to pass. But all the evidence I looked at showed nothing more than a battle being won outside of Egypt. Nothing like what the prophecy described.

I showed you why it was failed, now you don't want to believe it. You must have evidence to back up that it came to pass, please present it.

Incase you missed the earlier post

Ezekiel 30:10-11
"This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will put an end to the hordes of Egypt by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. He and his army—the most ruthless of nations— will be brought in to destroy the land. They will draw their swords against Egypt and fill the land with the slain. "

Never put an end to the hordes of Egypt, never destroyed the land. Thus failed prophecy.

 

[smackababy]

No, I'm attacking the fallacy that just because we share some words used in Greek Mythology, that means its meaning is the same as the how the word was originally used.

This fallacy was exposed earlier in the thread when it was stated that the Bible has stories similar to mythical tribes that preceded it, so that means it borrowed from them. I countered by stating that since the 10 Commandents preceded our system of Governance here in the US, that means we stole laws against murder and theft from the 10 Commandments.

Not only is that an intellectually weak arguement, it doesn't even hold up under the slightes bit of scrunity.

You seemed to have missed the entire point of my post. If the phrase containing Tartarus means something different than actual Tartarus, why does the phrase 'walking on the lake' mean literally, Jesus walked on the surface of water. Does the phrase ' walking on sunshine' literally mean someone is walking on photons emitted from the sun?

Also, the 'borrowing' of the ten commandments makes no sense. The oldest known laws against murder were Sumerian. Did the ten commandments borrow from that? If they did, I guess the Old Testament is invalid right?

 

[Dr. Zaus]

No, my comments were not intended to imply that.


I agree.


I don't mean to suggest, strictly, that "evil" is just a word, and that without words we'd lack evil. Evil and good are feelings. We'd still have those feelings even if we had no words to symbolize them. Feelings are real -- they are just subjective, not objective.

I'm going to throw this idea out there as something to think about, not argue for, this idea:

Hunger is also subjective; but it is still subjective, despite it being tied to objective states that come before the emotional state.

Can we get to a sense evil as embedded within humans before emotional states arise?

I think Heidegger tried in being and time to talk about an ontological ethics based on not following the 'inauthentic other' and being 'indebted' or 'guilty' regarding the suffering of the immediate other.

Objectvely, they simply exist. Evil and good are evaluations of those circumstances that are made by valuers.

I can't disagree (in the ontic-physical sense the ebbs and flows of the universe are valueless). But I'm not sure that valuing the physical above humans that make the physical into that which 'matters' is the a defensible ground to stand on when speaking of ethics. (not that you argued that)

Early on, Wittgenstein said that he did not want to say anything that was untrue, so he dismissed the concept of ethics as salient to his analytic philosophy. (a philosophy which was fundamentally inspirational for the vienna circle and thus what we call 'science' today)

 

[Moonbeam]

Thought is separation. Thoughts goal is to end separation. Thought can never end separation because thought is separation. This is why the journey always goes in a circle. Before we thought we were whole. To be whole is to end thought. Thought can't find God until thought dies. Thought can't kill itself. When thought realizes the hopelessness of its condition and dies in that condition can the realization take place that from the start there was never any journey to take. There is only silence that can fill with love. You can search for God and think forever but you'll only find him in your own heart.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

Thought is separation.

This is one of the most important findings of the phenomenological school of philosophical anthropology. (not to say you are following them, but I can 'read you' from that perspective)

Thoughts goal is to end separation.

Correct, as per the above too.

Thought can never end separation because thought is separation.

Said school would say thought can move us toward a place that allows for future de-severance.

This is why the journey always goes in a circle.

I would say spiral; but hermeneutic circles are what Heidegger was talking about in the above.

Before we thought we were whole. To be whole is to end thought. Thought can't find God until thought dies. Thought can't kill itself.

I think this is an accurate representation of existential ontology.

[only] When thought realizes the hopelessness of its condition and dies in that condition can the realization take place that from the start there was never any journey to take.

I interjected 'only' into your statement because I think it was implied.

Given what you've said I'm going to have to create an argument you never made and then disagree with it. IF we take your argument to be totallizing, that is in regards to all thinking vis a vis being in the world, then I can't follow you because:

When there's a temporary breakdown of wholeness because intentionality toward some end is impeded then thinking helps us develop new ways of transparent coping. Once we have a new way of being in the world transparent coping can resume.

Now I will agree with what I perceive as the bounds of your actual argument, the question of 'real' existential evil or good. If I am correct, then you are arguing inline with something I've been thinking for a while; there is something intrinsic in the human condition that reflects a moral truth that is more fundamental to our existence than what Descartes termed 'cogito' or the cognitive. Thus love, as it where, is the basic state of being that is removed in our cognition of separateness.

This interpretation follows closely Max Scheler's christian-love interpretation of phenomenology (which is in juxtaposition to Husserl, and thus Heidegger, Gadamer, and Merlu-Ponty; the folks most closely related to modern philosophical discourse regarding phenomenology).

Here's a short write up on Max for interested parties:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scheler/


I think he's been overly ignored and I may take him on as a basis for my development of ethical mythologizing in institutional theory in my dissertation.


I read (and cite) a lot not because I don't have my own ideas; but because my own ideas are often made much more precise by folks who had them well before me particularly when I have some level of disagreement with how those before me precisely formulated their argument.

 

[Moonbeam]

Here's a short write up on Max for interested parties:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scheler/

I started reading your link but have a bunch of work to do plus the language is difficult for me. But I got to this and thought to make some remarks about it:

"Valuing is an act of meaning giving or creation and is therefore an intentional act."

Perhaps the word intentional has a philosophical meaning, is a technical term of some kind, but to me it just means what it normally means, something you decide to do. In that sense, I would disagree. To me the value of things are a given that you do or do not see. They just are or they aren't. Of course, for a person interested in finding truth via thinking, I would think that the logic of an attitude or moral reverence for valuing things would make for a sound ethical position one might want to try more often to experience. In a great many religions, for example, it seems to me that the practice of gratitude is emphasized in such things as prayers of thanks. The thankful mind, I would think, would be more open to the other, less tightly wound around the ego.

"These acts are not committed by the intellect or reason, but are acts of the “heart,” i.e., emotional acts."

Makes sense for me.

"For Scheler, there are two basic emotional acts, the act of love and the act of hate. These two acts found all value-ception and consciousness (VII, 185). Love and hate are further characterized by Scheler as movements (GW VII, 191). In the act of love, the value of an object or person is deepened, revealing its highest or most profound significance. Hate, by contrast, is a movement of destruction, a movement wherein the value of an object or person is demeaned or degraded."

I don't know what his whole thinking is or if he considered the unconscious as part of his analysis, but I see love as the natural state of consciousness and hate the product the denial of feeling. Hate to me is a feeling we have when we experience unconscious fear all based on early negative conditioning. It is a defense, an armor of denial, an attempt to make others feel what we are feel but are afraid to admit into consciousness.

The reason that we differ in our ethical standards and areas of weakness is dependent on how deeply we were conditioned to hate ourselves, in what ways, and how we manage that and our guilt. I see it as a question of how badly our capacity to emphasize was damaged and in what ways.

Anyway, I find your link to be interesting. I think too that thought can be a way to put your ego in the middle of the highway to give it a better chance to be run over by the semi called grace.