Vatas' quote

[sMartins]

@GenghisKhan44

Everything we create, so we think, has to do with the material order.

If you do not work these days, or work less and therefore consume less ( I mean unnecessary stuff and waste) you will reduce your ecological footprint giving the chance to other people to work and live a decent life .... here it is the truth, even a solid foundation such as job has changed meaning.

Or shall we keep going with " you will rule over all creatures, fishes of the oceans, etc etc... " .... there are almost no fishes anymore ...

I told you man, I feel you, I Know what you mean and I'm totally agree with you but Christianity, SADLY, isn't the answer anymore.

We killed God, it's not a joke .... it's for real ..... it's like if we were building a super futuristic car for everyone, for the people, with zero impact on the environment but so expensive that once built we everybody must use it for a very long period of time, cause we have no resources to spent in that industry anymore if we want to eat also.
We were so obsessed to make this car very comfortable, with computer monitors, AI etc etc.. but we forgot that ancient technology ( nobody was thinking anymore at it, cause just working on the AI and shits) = BRAKES .... we did billions of perfect cars we must use for hundred of years but we forgot BRAKES. And people still use it, cause it's the only choice they have ..... with obvious consequences.

Or it's like if uncle Joe dies, a great man, landmark for all the family ... and everytime something bad happens to the family the nephew says " Oh if uncle Joe was here it would never have happened " ....... and of course bad things keep happening ...... uncle Joe is dead, we need a new landmark.

We have unchained Prometheus, we forgot the brakes and we keep praying for uncle Joe.

This is my clumsy attempt to metaphorize (in english) the void we are sinking in.

This instead from the article I posted on the first page that I suggest to read and comprehend.

"ETHICS, as a form of acting in view of ends, celebrates its impotence in the
world of technique regulated by doing as a pure production of results, where
the effects are added up in such a way that the final results can no longer be
lead back to the intentions of the initial agents. This means that it is no longer
ethics to choose the ends and to charge technique to find the means, but it is
technique which, assuming as ends the results of its procedures, conditions
ethics obliging it to take a position on a reality, no longer natural but artificial,
which technique does not cease to build and to make possible, whatever the
position assumed by ethics. In fact, once “acting” is subordinated to “doing”,
how can one prevent he who can do from not doing that which he can? Not
with the moral of intention inaugurated by Christianity and re-proposed in
terms of “pure reason” by Kant, because this moral of intention, basing itself on
the subjective principle of self-determination and not on the one of objective
responsibility, does not take into consideration the objective consequences of
actions and, precisely because it limits itself to safeguard the “good intention”,

cannot be up to the task of being technical. But not even the ethics of responsi-
bility is up to the task which Max Weber introduced and H. Jonas re-proposed

because, if the ethics of responsibility limits itself to demanding, as Weber
writes, that “one can respond to the foreseeable consequences of one’s own
actions”, then it is technique itself to reveal the scenario of unforeseeable-ness,
attributable, not like that ancient one to a defect of knowledge, but to an excess
of our power to do, enormously greater than our power to foresee."

[mvgulik]

(Confirmation bias) It applies to everyone, and bringing it up among thoughtful people is really only a sign you do not trust their opinons.

Not sure why you think you need to add some negative labeling suggestion in there. If was merely a information post.

Do "you" trust "your own" opinions ?

I don't, nor do I mind adjusting them given proper new data/info.

(Ignoring other stuff. Religion tainted stuff bore me.)

[Jalpha]

christianity is literally a death cult followed by self hating persecutionists who want the world destroyed. Christianity - just say no.

When you say Christianity, I presume you must only be familiar with Protestantized or Americanized Christianity. Americans tend to be puritanical when they are also Christians - and when they become fanatical about anything, such as communism, LGBT rights, or environmentalism - but this is ahistorical.

The Catholicism I know "On many occasions... has had to defend the goodness of creation, including that of the physical world." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #299.)

No. Examine your rituals and teachings. You eat the flesh and drink the blood of a dead man. The book of revelations. Examine how this differs to the Jewish endtime story. Revelations does not need to happen. The future is in flux.

Anyway if you cannot see it for yourself it is futile to try to shake you awake.

God is not omipotent. This is because God gave us free will.

Lemme see if i follow your logic: God is not omnipotent because He also gave trees the ability to grow, rocks the ability to sit still, gravity the ability to pull rocks, air and gasses to affect the world around them including by making tornadoes and hurricanes...

No. That would be stupid. Are you trying to make me look stupid? Free will is complex however to claim that we are always mindless automatons operating at the level of a tree or hurricane is stupid.

I am not asking you why you think God punishes people for sin, or how He does so, or any of your other gripes aside from this one: how is God's granting the power of right reason and of will that can defy impulses different from him granting a tree the power of growing roots or a bird from eating worms? And how does any of these nullify the power of God?

God is not punishing us. We are punishing ourselves.

Trees are genetic machines unwinding from their genetics. To an extent so are we and the bird. The difference between the bird and us is less tangible. I suppose I cannot claim that the bird lacks free will at all times. I suppose neither can I claim that the bird has no soul. Are you an animal operating on instinct or a rational entity capable of reasoning and changing your behaviour?

[Rexz]

The world, I understand, will probably die anyway, either in the Big Crunch or in heat death. It might not, depending on which model is true. But in any case vacillating about the future is useless. Many Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants waste ink, time, and hot air on it, especially in the topic of how many will be saved. It is irritatingly futile.

We only have the present. Only the present can even have any meaningfulness to us. Good exists in the present; a good life is lived in the present, not in memories of the past nor fantasies of the future. Do what is good today, to the people you see here and now. Good is obvious; you do it to yourself. There are points you get wrong sometimes; we all do. Our reason is not perfect, especially when it comes to sex. But everyone knows "you shall love your neighbor as yourself" is a truth, therefore a law, therefore a purpose to your life.

The God I believe in does not see the world either as a memory or as a fantasy. He sees it all as it if is this very moment. It is beyond me what that looks like. But I live in the moment, when I am not impulsively vacillating over decisions.

If you don't think the past don't have any meaningfulness to us, then I think you are mistaken.

Everything that allows you to live in the present, to operate in the present, and to shape the present for the future, is based on the past. Without the past, you will not have any valuable context to operate meaningfully in the present.

The past, present, and future are all important to any living and sentient creatures like us. The past is for context and reference, the present is for doing and planning (for the future, in which case you will still need to use and reference the past), and the future is what you are planning and shaping toward in the present, using what you know about the past. To have one without the others is not possible nor would be it conducive to a meaningful/purposeful life, as subjective as what can be considered meaningful and purposeful to individuals.

[sMartins]

THE INFINITY by Giacomo Leopardi

This solitary hill has always been dear to me
And this hedge, which prevents me from seeing most of
The endless horizon.
But when I sit and gaze, I imagine, in my thoughts,
Endless spaces beyond the hedge,
An all encompassing silence and a deeply profound quiet,
To the point that my heart is quite overwhelmed.
And when I hear the wind rustling through the trees
I compare its voice to the infinite silence.
And eternity occurs to me, and all the ages past,
And the present time, and its sound.
Amidst this immensity my thought drowns:
And to flounder in this sea is sweet to me.

Even if Poets lie too much.

And this is The Bible of our time, read it multiple times, try to comprehend it and spread the knowledge if you truly want to help.



And .... this is me.

[MagicManICT]

And this is The Bible of our time, read it multiple times, try to comprehend it and spread the knowledge if you truly want to help.

As much as I like Nietzsche, I'd hardly call anything he wrote "the Bible of our times." Seriously, though, if a person hasn't read his writings and thought about it, they'd not realize how oft he is misquoted and misinterpreted, even by collegiate professors. (At least, that's my opinion, but I can be very contrarian in thought.)

@Revelations discussion: There's a lot of theology out there about various interpretations of John's writing and prophecy. I've even read some that has said it was about the fall of the Rome, the ascension of the Catholic Church, and our eventual break from it and finally finding our proper place in a world where we don't need to be tied to dogmatic religious practice--where Christ's true purpose will finally be realized. But this requires studying things that aren't a part of the general Catholic/Christian teachings, things that have been declared heretical by the Catholic church in the past, and where public copies have been lost to time. Some of these are resurfacing through archaeological digs, though.

Still, many are put off by any discussion of religion. They have been poisoned by hundreds of years of Jihad, Crusades, and Inquisition; by acts of atrocities even today committed by those who would claim to do God's work.

[sMartins]

As much as I like Nietzsche, I'd hardly call anything he wrote "the Bible of our times.

And you're right, only time will tell us the importance of that book, and no book can be called like that while we are living the change .... but trust me, listen to the messenger or at the absolute mad man, that's how we would call him these days.

You have to delete "he wrote" and your sentence is perfect. "I'd hardly call anything the Bible of our times".

[MagicManICT]

And you're right, only time will tell us the importance of that book, and no book can be called like that while we are living the change .... but trust me, listen to the messenger or at the absolute mad man, that's how we would call him these days.

I like to think of a passage from the Gospel of Thomas: Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All." --http://gnosis.org/naghamm/gthlamb.html

You have to delete "he wrote" and your sentence is perfect. "I'd hardly call anything the Bible of our times".

Touche!

[Jalpha]

things that have been declared heretical by the Catholic church

Wonder why. $

[GenghisKhan44]

Trees are genetic machines unwinding from their genetics. To an extent so are we and the bird. The difference between the bird and us is less tangible. I suppose I cannot claim that the bird lacks free will at all times. I suppose neither can I claim that the bird has no soul. Are you an animal operating on instinct or a rational entity capable of reasoning and changing your behaviour?

Free will is complex however to claim that we are always mindless automatons operating at the level of a tree or hurricane is stupid.

The only clear thing these observations tell me is that all animals have instincts, and that you are not sure whether animals, including men, ever or never act from reason or will.
So it seems entirely possible, in your world, that the way man acts is simply an instinct. You say that equating man's behaviour with the behaviour of the air or of plants is stupid. I don't think you grasp how right you are; human beings are remarkably stupid. If I and the vast majority of people are any example to you, at least in believing in a God whom you, smart as you are, reject because He doesn't actually exist. If that doesn't do it for you, consider how much time we waste, say, fighting wars over matters which will be forgotten by the time we die, anyway, even if of old age. Consider what any given government is doing, rather than what they ought to be doing. People are stupid.

Perhaps we are just one more broken toy in the universe that's just going berserk? Like tornadoes, like epidemics, like global warming or freezing through the past 4 billion years, black holes, red giants gobbling up planets... maybe our stupid behaviour is just another fluke?

I don't think you know how rightly you say:

God is not punishing us. We are punishing ourselves.

Even if there is a God or a Heaven, that would be true. Original sin only means man shoots himself in the foot and he can't stop himself. I am glad we can at least agree that original sin is real.