Renlund attempts to slam the door shut on Heavenly Mother

[Morley]

...
Ha! It's too bad the Greeks and Romans didn't have any philosophers and are only known for "might makes right" and pedophilia.

Morely,

I brought up how pedophilia was normalized in Roman times, and Paul played a part in eradicating its normalization; and linked to a fellow exmormon Jonathan Streeters video on how some on the extreme far Left are defending pedophilia, see https://youtu.be/qAP4czG3DjE
Do you think that Christianity had anything to do with eradicating this former normalization of pedophilia? Do you think that the way Jesus was/is depicted as a god in the New Testament, and Jesus's attitude toward children, had anything to do with how people in Roman times thought about children once Christianity became more popular and part of the society's group consciousness?

I doubt if Christianity had much to do with eradicating pedophilia. Indeed, there's plenty of evidence that some early Christian priests and monks seemed to embrace the practice.

[Morley]

Yet here we are. And all I have are your words, my friend.

Does this mean you want to sincerely be my friend? Or did you mean something else, and if so what? I'm sincerely trying to build a bridge and seeking understanding with my questions.

Free Ranger, I'm here to discuss your ideas. I won't give them a pass because I like you, nor will I denigrate them if I dislike you. And yes, I may mock you, if I think you're really being a dumbass. But you can handle it.


edit: For what it's worth, when you start in on the Viking blood or alpha male shite, you're just asking to be mocked.

[Free Ranger]

When I was an atheist (or Agnostic Mystic) I used to say that ethics and morality is simply defined as "avoiding unnecessary harm." Then I would make the argument that we can quantify harm, for example slapping someone in the face for no good reason at an award show can cause pain and trauma, which can be quantified. I then would argue that we should not harm people unnecessarily. But I realized I had no justification for the should. Nietzsche made me realize that I was, as Hume put it, forming an Ought from an Is. . Nietzsche was like, on atheism, why should we not harm someone if there is no objective metaphysical Good and Evil?

I can appreciate your line of reasoning here, FR. But seriously, how is the word of God any more of an "ought" than by definitional fiat? Have you solved the Euthyphro Dilemma?

When I was at the Lord's University, a philosophy teacher I had was a big fan of Kierkegaard. He taught us that Kierkegaard, and existentialism, is the basis of the Book of Mormon. When we got to Nietzsche, a professor buddy of his was apparently the Nietzsche expert, and so he had that guy come in and teach that part of the class. This uber-TBM was nearly in tears over the connections between Nietzsche and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He agreed with Nietzsche that Western values artificially prized weakness, and the root is envy of the strong. The true strong are grateful, basically high on life. Nietzsche's supreme teaching is gratitude. You may be handicap, or whatever it is, but you can still get in there and participate your best. In the Eternal Return, you must be grateful for what you have to relive that broken life again and again and say, "One more time!". In a huge ironic twist, DCP, who every other post castigates atheism for being nihilistic, every now and again plugs one of his favorite movies, Groundhog Day, which teaches this Nietzschian lesson.

There may be no right and wrong in the way Christianity has come to believe in good and evil, but Nietzsche did nothing if not make value judgements, and aspire to a better way forward.

I'm a little surprised that you advance such traditional moral framework since I believe you a fan of Terryl Givens, who is knee-deep in postmodernist defenses of the Church. Anyway, I guess my main point is that there is no history of philosophy you can teach that ends up with a clear divide between atheists and Christians, because for every atheist philosopher there is a long list of Christian defenders who think that person is the one to make real sense of Christianity.

Gadianton,

Every time I see you you have a pipe in your mouth.

You are responding to me as if I'm a biblical fundamentalist/literalist. I'm coming at this from a different angle, as a pragmatic religious humanist. So the Euthyphro Dilemma misses the point. By the way, during my anti-theist phase that was one of my favorite things to bring up. My argument and position is simple. Whether or not the gods of the religions or the supernatural realm exists, even if we look at it from a naturalistic perspective, the Sciences themselves point to the fact that we are innately religious or homoreligious; and religion evolved within human cultures to produce greater group cohesion and psychological and physiological benefits. In other words, the gods and mythologies were instrumental in forming our current ethics and our ability to be more civilized. Atheists themselves make this argument! I am simply summarizing a position I got from atheists who stepped out of the narrow framework of a Richard Dawkins kind of atheism, and began looking at religion and theism in a more sophisticated way. Here are some short video clips that make my point:

https://youtu.be/oldj11NEsc0

https://youtu.be/HOH4opPFgyY

https://youtu.be/c0_J998UD9s

https://youtu.be/HvgtHPHNXZQ

And here is a longer talk by an outspoken atheist who has worked with Richard Dawkins, who even he admits we evolved to be religious and benefit from religion. See https://youtu.be/8BwGxji6Agw

Our sense of ethics and morality today, as civilized people, was influenced and formed through the crucible of what Joseph Campbell describes as the growing formation of the monomyth; and what I think Jordan Peterson is correct about, that Christianity had a lot to do with the formation of our current ethics. Which even the atheist Matt Dillahunty couldn't help but acknowledge in a debate with Tom Holland. Meanwhile, I believe I posted somewhere in the two threads I have recently posted on, a list of books written by scholars on the benefit of religion for society, and even for atheists. For example, The Faith Instinct by Nicholas Wade.

Yeah, I think there are some really "out there" interpretations of Nietzsche. There are even Feminists who utilize Nietzsche for pete's sake.

You said

There may be no right and wrong in the way Christianity has come to believe in good and evil, but Nietzsche did nothing if not make value judgements, and aspire to a better way forward.

I can agree with that to a degree. As I've said before, I have mixed feelings about Nietzsche. I find his words both inspiring and problematic at the same time. But I think that, if you really sit down and read him thoroughly, as I have done. Even going back to where he criticizes David Strauss. And read Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in two different translations, like I did in order to try to really understand him. And read Nietzsche, Prophet of Nazism by Abir, and Dangerous Minds by Ronald Beiner. You will, I believe, see that my analysis in the previous post has more merit than you are willing to give me credit for.

By the way, keep in mind that Nietzsche's way forward, as you put it, was amoral. He constantly speaks of his future followers as, "we Immoralists." In his Zarathustra, his heavenly mother is Nature itself, which cuts into itself to produce something new (referencing how evolving organic life feeds on itself, replacing one form with another). For him, the overly compassionate and weak need to and get out of the way and wither on the tree of life and fall off in order for the ripened Higher Men to better flourish. Christian man is polluted he says repeatedly. Nietzsche was never able to fully abandon his Lutheran upbringing, and so he borrowed from the Christian concept (I discussed in this thread) about the adamic body being replaced with the pneumatic body by being seeded by Christ. As he replaces the seed (or Divine Wisdom) of Christ with what he describes as the amoral wild wisdom of Zarathustra. He uses the same kind of language to speak of a new Zarathustran species, a Zarathustra Kingdom, see https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ ... and-persia

He was seeking the replacement of docile/civilized Christian man with a Higher Man; which would then eventually overtime evolve spiritually or literally into the Ubermensch. Nietzsche's Way Forward was to be more in line with evolving Life which was his God (personified as Dionysus), which is connected to the natural world as an amoral ever expanding monster of energy, see: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/520803 ... d-is-to-me

The core values that Nietzsche instilled was the Greco-Roman values of Might Makes Right and artistic creative flourishing, even if that means at the expense of the weak and ill.

Regarding Terryl Givens, I would need more information to respond to that. You speak of my "traditional [Christian] moral framework" as if that is a bad thing and you have a different moral framework. I interpret the "traditional [Christian] moral framework" as the general Ethic of the New Testament, that is grounded in the metaphysical belief structure that we have a soul and are not merely mammals; and thus we should treat others as we would want to be treated, as a fellow metaphysical person (a soul), and to ideally strive to produce the Kin-dome here on earth (as it is visualized to exist in the Heavenly Realm).

I'm curious to know what your moral framework is. Are you a Christian Atheist, Ayn Rand Atheist, Buddhist Nontheist, Nietzschean/pagan Atheist? Remember that atheism is just what one does not believe, or a lack of belief, assuming you are what is termed a "weak atheist." Or do you not have any ethical code? If you have an ethical code where do you think it came from? How did it evolve? Does Christianity get any credit for it?

[Free Ranger]

Morely,

I brought up how pedophilia was normalized in Roman times, and Paul played a part in eradicating its normalization; and linked to a fellow exmormon Jonathan Streeters video on how some on the extreme far Left are defending pedophilia, see https://youtu.be/qAP4czG3DjE
Do you think that Christianity had anything to do with eradicating this former normalization of pedophilia? Do you think that the way Jesus was/is depicted as a god in the New Testament, and Jesus's attitude toward children, had anything to do with how people in Roman times thought about children once Christianity became more popular and part of the society's group consciousness?

I doubt if Christianity had much to do with eradicating pedophilia. Indeed, there's plenty of evidence that some early Christian priests and monks seemed to embrace the practice.

I think you might be someone who just always has a deconstructive negative interpretation of everything someone like me says. Have you ever seriously looked into whether or not Christianity had anything to do with the undoing of the normalization of pedophilia? Please don't dodge that question.

[Free Ranger]

I have no idea if you have a sense of morality or ethics, but I'm going to offer a suggestion that we apply rapoport's rules: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rapoport%27s_Rules

That was no straw man. I replied specifically to what you said.

So what I hear you saying is that the gods of any culture are not representative of the culture's ethical guidelines. What I think you are trying to say is that the gods are often depicted as too fantastical and mythical to be the only source of their ethical codes. If that is what you are saying, I think I agree.

Excellent.

What I am saying is that, for example, the New Testament presents Jesus as a supernatural hero god that has an ethic that is different than many of the other pagan gods. There is a wealth of biblical scholarship on this subject if you are curious.

Sure. Every religion is different in the stories of their supernatural heroes. You seem to be implying Christianity is not just different, but better. Of course some Biblical scholars are going to think Jesus is better. As you can guess, I'm not so sure that he is.

This is why Thomas Jefferson, despite the flaws in his personal life, produced his Jefferson Bible. He cut out all the supernatural stuff but he believed that his ethics was derived or mirrored in the person of Jesus. He called his edited New Testament, "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth." He believed that America would benefit from following this Ethic.

Yeah. Thank you for making my point. Jefferson rejected the religious mythologies of Christianity because he didn't think they expressed any moral message for society. He focused on the teachings that are part of almost any other religious or philosophical guidelines that have stood the test of time.

Since objective biblical Scholars are convinced that nearly everything (or a lot) that Jesus is said to have said and done is based on creative license (what the scholarship calls Narrative Scripturalization, Figural Reading or Midrash); in that the New Testament authors are creatively producing a heroic god to replace the ethic of the pagan gods, I don't think it's ludicrous what I said.

Or borrowing from the ethics of what you call pagan gods.

I also recommend C. G. Jung's Essay on Wotan: http://www.philosopher.eu/others-writin ... -c-g-jung/
Jung talks about the Norse god Wotan mirroring the pagan morality and psychological state of the Nazis under Hitler. Watching documentaries on Hitler's concept of god and religion and Hitler's use of ritual pageantry to create a dramatic experience, it's clear to me that he borrowed heavily from Norse gods and mythology to ground his pagan ethics; while combining it with aspects of Nietzscheanism and other pagan mystical ideas.

Sure. However, the most heinous act of Nazism, The Holocaust, was influenced by the Christian mythology of the degenerate nature of Jews, homosexuals, and gypsies.

I'm not saying that political leaders don't use religious mythology to justify their ends. I am saying that when you suggest that a mythological Zeus raping women demonstrates the inferiority of Greek morality, that you're wrong.

On top of this, Richard Wagner's musical Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring Cycle) had glamorized the pagan ethic of Norse gods and heroes which influenced Nietzsche and many Germans. So no I do not think my statement is ludicrous.

Yes, artists use Norse, Greek, Jewish, and Christian mythology all the time.

I'll be honest Morley, I find it unfulfilling and personally unfruitful to engage with you further. I think you have an extremely cynical interpretation of everything. I mean blaming Christianity for the Nazis killing gypsies! Dismissing the social consciousness (which would have a god Zeus raping women) out of hand while admitting to nothing unique in Christianity. I mean, I just can't man. I just can't.

I usually engage with someone because I think they might teach me something or change my mind. But you take such a cynical view on everything and dismiss a wealth of scholarship out of hand, that I just can't.

I think I have made my case sufficiently already without typing more words. I provided links and sources. I am respectfully removing myself from further dialogue with you.

Be well

[Free Ranger]

Does this mean you want to sincerely be my friend? Or did you mean something else, and if so what? I'm sincerely trying to build a bridge and seeking understanding with my questions.

Free Ranger, I'm here to discuss your ideas. I won't give them a pass because I like you, nor will I denigrate them if I dislike you. And yes, I may mock you, if I think you're really being a dumbass. But you can handle it.


edit: For what it's worth, when you start in on the Viking blood or alpha male shite, you're just asking to be mocked.

Yeah, this is the kind of negative energy I'd rather not absorb. Yes I can handle it, sure, but I have the right to choose not to absorb it. I already have to absorb negative energy from contentious disagreeable people in the real world here and there, at work, on the street, in traffic, etc. I don't need to go on here and absorb more of it. Some people get off on it. I'm one of those people who don't.

So again, I am choosing to refrain from further dialogue with you. By the way, you're being grossly unfair about how I have expressed my Viking ancestry, especially given how I have emphasized in this thread that my ancestors converted to Christianity, and I spoke about that positively in this thread. This is another reason why I find it on unfruitful to dialogue with you.

And on another note, I'd rather not hijack the thread going back and forth with you when the audience may want to actually discuss heavenly mother.

Peace

[Morley]

I brought up how pedophilia was normalized in Roman times, and Paul played a part in eradicating its normalization; and linked to a fellow exmormon Jonathan Streeters video on how some on the extreme far Left are defending pedophilia, see https://youtu.be/qAP4czG3DjE
Do you think that Christianity had anything to do with eradicating this former normalization of pedophilia? Do you think that the way Jesus was/is depicted as a god in the New Testament, and Jesus's attitude toward children, had anything to do with how people in Roman times thought about children once Christianity became more popular and part of the society's group consciousness?

I doubt if Christianity had much to do with eradicating pedophilia. Indeed, there's plenty of evidence that some early Christian priests and monks seemed to embrace the practice.

I think you might be someone who just always has a deconstructive negative interpretation of everything someone like me says. Have you ever seriously looked into whether or not Christianity had anything to do with the undoing of the normalization of pedophilia? Please don't dodge that question.

I may indeed tend to deconstruct.

You're right. I have not "seriously looked into whether or not Christianity had anything to do with the undoing of the normalization of pedophilia." But if the above youtube video is an example of the work you've done to research the question, neither have you.

What's your response to the charge that Christianity (especially the clergy) lives in a glass house when it comes to pedophilia?

[Morley]

I mean blaming Christianity for the Nazis killing gypsies!

In the Christian tradition, the Gypsies turned the newborn Christ away.




edit.

FR. Saw your last post. And it's okay, I don't need your response. I still may respond to you, however.

Peace to you, too.

[Marcus]

Free Ranger, I'm here to discuss your ideas. I won't give them a pass because I like you, nor will I denigrate them if I dislike you. And yes, I may mock you, if I think you're really being a dumbass. But you can handle it.


edit: For what it's worth, when you start in on the Viking blood or alpha male shite, you're just asking to be mocked.

Yeah, this is the kind of negative energy I'd rather not absorb. Yes I can handle it, sure, but I have the right to choose not to absorb it. I already have to absorb negative energy from contentious disagreeable people in the real world here and there, at work, on the street, in traffic, etc. I don't need to go on here and absorb more of it. Some people get off on it. I'm one of those people who don't.

So again, I am choosing to refrain from further dialogue with you. By the way, you're being grossly unfair about how I have expressed my Viking ancestry, especially given how I have emphasized in this thread that my ancestors converted to Christianity, and I spoke about that positively in this thread. This is another reason why I find it on unfruitful to dialogue with you.

And on another note, I'd rather not hijack the thread going back and forth with you when the audience may want to actually discuss heavenly mother.

Peace

From the person who posted an OP chock full of “grossly unfair” sexist tropes and more “negative energy” and ugly gender bias than we’ve seen here in quite a while. You don’t get off upon it? Really? Morley’s response was incredibly mild, but now you’re shunning them. : D

Anyway, back to the topic…..

[Free Ranger]

I brought up how pedophilia was normalized in Roman times, and Paul played a part in eradicating its normalization; and linked to a fellow exmormon Jonathan Streeters video on how some on the extreme far Left are defending pedophilia, see https://youtu.be/qAP4czG3DjE
Do you think that Christianity had anything to do with eradicating this former normalization of pedophilia? Do you think that the way Jesus was/is depicted as a god in the New Testament, and Jesus's attitude toward children, had anything to do with how people in Roman times thought about children once Christianity became more popular and part of the society's group consciousness?

I doubt if Christianity had much to do with eradicating pedophilia. Indeed, there's plenty of evidence that some early Christian priests and monks seemed to embrace the practice.

I think you might be someone who just always has a deconstructive negative interpretation of everything someone like me says. Have you ever seriously looked into whether or not Christianity had anything to do with the undoing of the normalization of pedophilia? Please don't dodge that question.

I may indeed tend to deconstruct.

You're right. I have not "seriously looked into whether or not Christianity had anything to do with the undoing of the normalization of pedophilia." But if the above youtube video is an example of the work you've done to research the question, neither have you.

What's your response to the charge that Christianity (especially the clergy) lives in a glass house when it comes to pedophilia?

Even though you ignore most of my questions, deflect, dismiss, and act rude, I will be kind and polite and answer your question. I think it is obvious that the Catholic leaders have been immoral in how they have handled the pedophile scandals. They are clearly at odds with the actual ethic of the New Testament itself. As you know religious people can often be hypocrites, and fail to live up to their own spiritual ideals, which the New Testament itself points out.

I will entertain you just a bit more and answer your false accusation: as someone who reads a lot of books, especially biblical scholarship, it is difficult to pin down which scholarly source led me to every one of my conclusions. If memory serves me correctly, I remember realizing that Christianity was instrumental in the undoing of the normalization of pedophilia after reading Sarah Ruden's book, Paul Among the People.

I'd rather not go further at this point. The uncharitable interpretations, false accusations, outright dismissals of a wealth of scholarship, being extremely cynical. I'm frankly not just not getting anything out of this.

The audience can review our exchange and make up their own minds. Or if you want to private message me and have a more civil conversation without (what seems to me putting on for a crowd), that's cool too.

Peace