Happy Easter, The Death of Jesus!

[jorb]

If God is dead, then everything is allowed, there is no ontological distinction to be made between rainbows and corpses, and all is merely flux and ash before the void. As the universe clearly has meaning, telos, will, and conciousness, I find the Christian story infinitely more believable, especially as it harmonizes with the fact that Jesus Christ -- speaking as a matter of historical and objective fact -- is the central icon of human history, as foretold in Jewish prophecy. Christianity has the only pure, wholesome, and integrated ethics, and the only sound anthropology in teaching the fallen state of man, and his salvation through grace, rather than through works.

If Christianity is not true, then I see no meaning in the alternative, but only a nihilistic subjectivism bordering on solipsism. Without Christ the levees break, only a profound existential absurditiy remains, and nothing can be built upon such loose sands (Matthew 7:24-27).

I admit that this is a leap of faith, as is the alternative belief in an infinite chain -- turtles all the way down -- of natural causation.

He is risen!

[Potjeh]

As the universe clearly has meaning, telos, will, and conciousness

[citation needed]

[jorb]

I believe that simple introspection would serve to prove the point.

[Potjeh]

Uhm, no, not really. It just reinforces the view that the world is pure chaos, and the random patterns that seem meaningful are just philosophical pareidolia.

[jorb]

Uhm, no, not really. It just reinforces the view that the world is pure chaos, and the random patterns that seem meaningful are just philosophical pareidolia.

It is saddening to hear that this is all you discover upon practicing introspection.

the world is pure chaos

Predicating things of the world requires order and logos. The world is apparently not so confused that you do not feel comfortable making truth claims.

[Potjeh]

Uhm, we're just stating opinions, aren't we? It's not like either of us is offering factual evidence.

But yeah, the main thing I get from contemplation is that there is almost no justice in the world. Wouldn't a world with meaning and purpose be just?

[sMartins]

We are ALL Christians, here in the west (europe and north america) and yes, God is dead ... now the real question is:
Will western civilization survive after the end of Christianity? or will Christianity survive at the end of the Western civilization? (hint = cause they are the same thing)

"We are all convinced that we live in the technical age of which we enjoy
its benefits in terms of goods and spaces of freedom. We are freer than
primitive men because we have more playgrounds to choose from. Any
regret, any disaffection in our times seems pathetic. But the habit with
which we utilise instruments and services which reduce space, speed up
time, soothe pain, make vain the standards on which all morals have been
carved, we risk not asking ourselves if our way of being men is not too antiquated for living in the technical age which not we, but the abstraction of
our mind has created, obliging us, with an obligation stronger than the one
sanctioned by all of the morals which have been written in history, to enter
and take part.

In this rapid and relentless pursuit we still carry in ourselves the traits of
pre-technological man who acted in view of purposes inscribed on a horizon
of meaning, with a baggage of his own ideas and a wealth of feelings in which
he recognized himself. The technical age abolished this “humanistic” scenario,
and the questions of meaning which arise remain outstanding, not because
technique is not yet sufficiently perfected, but because finding answers to similar questions is not a part of his plans.
In fact technique does not tend toward a purpose, does not promote a
meaning, does not open scenarios of salvation, does not redeem, does not reveal the truth. Technique works, and since its functioning becomes planetary,
it is necessary to look again at the concepts of the individual, of identity, freedom, salvation, truth, meaning and purpose, but also those of nature, ethics,
politics, religion and history, of which the pre-technological age nourished
itself and that now, in the technical age, will have to be reconsidered, cast off
or re-established at their roots."

Phainomena xxi/82-83 Selected Essays in Contemporary Italian Philosophy


Now the thing is that all of this it's unavoidably inscribed in Christianity, cause for the first time in the history the man is at the center of the universe. (Individualism is also brought by Christinaity)
And it's not a coincidence if we, Westerners, are the first civilization in the world, Christianity allowed all of this but also brought us those problems ... that, for example, Greeks would't had.

Uhm, no, not really. It just reinforces the view that the world is pure chaos, and the random patterns that seem meaningful are just philosophical pareidolia.

Just to explain you in a super easy way: if that (your sentence) become a common belief (that is happening at least since the last 100 years) no civilization would ever be possible ... and we would be doomed, like, actually, I think we already are (but this is in my opinion, the last one I mean).

[MagicManICT]

Funny thing is that if you really think about it, Nietzsche never really answers his own philosophical conundrum. The best conclusion drawn is that we should live as if God is dead, and that the onus of the responsibility of our actions falls only upon our shoulders. You can very well argue that religion is the very crux of why people behave badly--ie they have something other than themselves to blame for their actions. "The devil made me do it." "For God and country." "By the Divine Right vested in me."

The funnier thing is that you can't use the chaos and randomness to explain away God, either. If chaos truly ruled, there would be no order to the universe, no ratio of 700:701 of quantum particles that allowed the physical universe to manifest after the big bang. Then again, maybe there are a finite number of universes in an infinite pool of energy and we're just one of the weird ones that happened to come to some level of stabilization. We can make up all kinds of crazy theories that can't ever be tested because, as a universe, we're myopic and can't see past the light blinding us: the singular "point of origin." In other words: atheists are just as stupid as fundamentalists that believe the universe was created in a literal "six days."

The lessons I carry out of my Christian upbringing are starkly different from those the Church* wishes to teach, though, and I can't bring myself to associate with those that I've come to believe have it so wrong. *I've been to many denominations, and the second chapter of Revelations pretty much has it right: a bunch of idiots arguing over who is right and wrong and none of them having the singular answer, just their own fragment which is only a small part of the overall truth of their shared belief, the worst part being their anger and hating each other for it. (Completely off topic, I read a theory that Revelations has already came to pass. Very interesting from a philosophical standpoint... might have to dig it back up again if I can remember the book.)

[sMartins]

Funny thing to me is that we, right now, beleive in science as it was a religion ... cause our minds are still used to reason that way. But science doesn't care at all about all of that, science just works ... and it's not enough when you need to take humans in consideration ... that what Nietzsche was saying, that we don't have anything new to replace with .... that instead it's always happened previously in our history.

P.S.

"Oh petty man, do not think that this universe is made for you, you rather will be right if you adjust yourself to the universal nature and the universe harmony."

Plato, translated by me, so yeah .... we have a lot to learn yet from Greeks.

[twincannon]

explain this