Reasons to call Jesus God
I propose a thought experiment about Jesus because I want to ask a question. The thought experiment is as follows: assume Jesus was just a normal human being who had some good teachings about how to live. The reason I call it a thought experiment is because Im not asking you to actually believe anythingthat Jesus in fact was or wasnt God, or even if Jesus did or did not really exist. Im merely asking you to entertain for a few minutes the idea that Jesus was just a normal human being who had some good teachings about how to live.
If the idea were true, would there be some sort of reason or motive for people to say Jesus is God anyway? I can think of one: to avoid having to do what he taught. Ill explain with an analogy.
I do much of the computer related work in a local church. Im webmaster, zoom operator (services are online), and general tech resource. People often thank me for doing what I do, which I certainly appreciate. But some people suggest, by word or expression, that what Im doing is extremely high-level work, requiring a huge dose of talent along with native genius. Im exaggerating, of course, but the basic Idea is this: if someone elevates my work then they obviously shouldnt be asked to help do some of it. You dont ask a layperson to help do brain surgery. So, you shouldnt ask an average member of the congregation to do high-level tech work.
So, if I said Jesus was just a regular guy with some great teachings that I really admire, then someone might ask me why I dont practice those I teachings which I claim to value so much. On the other hand, if Jesus is God, then of course his teachings are great and valuable, but we normal, weak, sinful human beings really cant be faulted for not following such elevated and noble teachings.
His teachings become like someones great-grandmothers bone china dinner set, entirely too rare, valuable, and historic to actually be used at a dinner.
If the idea were true, would there be some sort of reason or motive for people to say Jesus is God anyway? I can think of one: to avoid having to do what he taught. Ill explain with an analogy.
I do much of the computer related work in a local church. Im webmaster, zoom operator (services are online), and general tech resource. People often thank me for doing what I do, which I certainly appreciate. But some people suggest, by word or expression, that what Im doing is extremely high-level work, requiring a huge dose of talent along with native genius. Im exaggerating, of course, but the basic Idea is this: if someone elevates my work then they obviously shouldnt be asked to help do some of it. You dont ask a layperson to help do brain surgery. So, you shouldnt ask an average member of the congregation to do high-level tech work.
So, if I said Jesus was just a regular guy with some great teachings that I really admire, then someone might ask me why I dont practice those I teachings which I claim to value so much. On the other hand, if Jesus is God, then of course his teachings are great and valuable, but we normal, weak, sinful human beings really cant be faulted for not following such elevated and noble teachings.
His teachings become like someones great-grandmothers bone china dinner set, entirely too rare, valuable, and historic to actually be used at a dinner.
Comments (95)
Excellent points. Reminds me of someone I've been learning about recently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard
Let's say that I listen to sermons for years and hear all the great bible stories. One day God finally calls me to sacrifice my son. Just to make sure I'm not crazy, I check with my pastor. He tells me I am indeed crazy and calls the police. So did the pastor ever really believe in Abraham and Isaac ? Or were these stories all along more like magic spells, incantations ? Like Jesus walking on water. Like his mother becoming pregnant as a virgin. Now I'm thinking of a story that the pastor's daughter might want to tell....
I would think Jesus is even easier to ignore if he's just some eccentric, wandering teacher with an opinion.
Can you think of one religion which hasn't strayed from its original message, where teachings aren't ignored?
What problem are you trying to solve with this thought experiment? Which teachings of Jesus are true and which ones are ignored?
Quoting Art48
I have generally held that if Jesus did live at any point (and we know almost nothing about this character) he was a human being who had some myths develop around him, like so many others. It would be a brave person who can identify actual teachings.
What is in the teachings of Jesus that are not in the teaching of Jewish scriptures and works of the rabbis?
Quoting Art48
The problem arises when they thank Jesus for what someone does.
Im reminded of this idea from Erich Fromm:
"...people who are firm believers in Christ as the great lover, the self-sacrificing God, can turn this belief, in an alienated way, into the experience that it is Jesus who loves for them. Jesus thus becomes an idol; the belief in him becomes the substitute for ones own act of loving. In a simple, unconscious formula: Christ does all the loving for us; we can go on in the pattern of the Greek hero, yet we are saved because the alienated faith in Christ is a substitute for the imitation of Christ.
So in a sense it is a deflection of the responsibility to be and do what Jesus said.
It's easier to worship Jesus than to become Jesus so if you call him a god you are making that goal unreachable and then go your usual way.
Most Christians say they believe God commands us to love our enemies and forgive seventy times seven. Yet when 9/11 happened, I don't recall any Christian saying we should turn the other cheek.
I'm NOT saying we should have turned the other cheek. I'm merely pointing out that there's an enormous gulf between what Christians (and other religious people say) and what they do, possibly in the Christian case enabled by the lofty view of who Jesus is.
Yes. And I like the Fromm quote.
And it was Islam, a religion of peace, that flew the planes into the buildings. I don't think any religion honors its tradition all that much. The gulf between theory and practice is one of the things which makes us human.
Jesus often spoke with the authority of someone who had direct knowledge of God, whereas the rabbis tended to rely on the authority of the Torah and the interpretations of previous rabbis.
He challenged the traditional interpretations of the Jewish Law, emphasizing the spirit rather than the letter. For example, Jesus taught that love for God and love for one's neighbor were the most important commandments, rather than scrupulous adherence to the Law.
He welcomed all people, regardless of their social status or background, whereas the rabbis tended to maintain the social heirarchy.
He emphasized the importance of a personal relationship with God, rather than relying solely on religious practices or following the teachings of religious leaders.
Jesus performed miracles, such as healing the sick and raising the dead, which were not part of traditional Jewish teachings, and which the Rabbis didn't or couldn't do.
Not much, apart from that.
Whatever else one might think of Kierkegaard, he saw the demand from a person to follow Christ as a direct requirement even if the metaphors were unclear. The wiki page you cite gives a few tastes from the Works of Love:
Nice. :grin:
:up:
That's what an idealized Jesus might say: take up your cross !
Thinkers that warn us against idolatry tend to become idols. There seems to be something deep in us that demands this transference of responsibility. We hide behind daddy. But there's also the project of becoming our own father, undoing our having been thrown (O heroic impossible hope !)
Jesus becomes an excuse to crucify. What myth is more extreme than the public humiliation and execution of a god by the ruling church and the state ? What is said here about an individuality (?) that transcends everything worldly and respectable ?
I think he's a hero, all things considered. It seems to me that Heidegger tried to generalize Kierkegaard.
Kierkegaard was to Christianity as Heidegger would be to philosophy, a rebel voice calling it out for its complacent industriousness, calling it back to its terrible and wonderful roots. (?) Why is an excavation necessary ? There's too much plaque on the cross. If all the respectable people are Christians and philosophers, then none of them are. Foolishness to the Greeks, madness to the complacent knowledge industrial complex.
Kierkegaard wrote somewhere that the way he was treated by the Christian intellectuals of his day was as or more important than what he himself said. He was a questioning protagonist who forced them to reveal themselves as phonies, faint memories of the real thing ...
But is the real thing good ? Maybe the problem wasn't that they weren't Christians but only that they pretended to be.
Kierkegaard was pretty clear about what conditions he laid out required of an individual.
You will have to enlighten me how and where Heidegger 'generalized' that.
One challenge in that regard is how to see Heidegger as a bridge Kierkegaard saw Hegel unable to build.
Let me put it another way. The emphasis upon the Single Individual versus a 'person in their situation" is not a difference unless it is one.
Is that not the question?
I suspect you know K's work better than I do. I'm new to it, and I read it as an atheist.
Quoting Paine
I think it's most visible in the early lectures. Ontology?The Hermeneutics of Facticity is a great one. So is The Concept of Time (all three 'versions' actually, but the lectures are richest.) For overviews, Van Buren's The Young Heidegger and Kisiel's 'Genesis' are great.
You follow with some great questions, but maybe we should explore them in another thread ?
Haha, I like this. It is underhandedly criticizing :smirk:. You are rebuking Paul's main argument against the Law (of Moses), and rightfully so, because he was a wanker who didn't know shit from shinola other than to build castles in the sand to build up his new religion he made out of Jesus (meaning they were probably not from Jesus himself).
I don't think so. For instance, Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef is reported to have taught support of "evil" by not resisting "evil-doers" (re: "turn the other cheek" Matthew 5:3842, "love your enemies" Luke 6:2731, Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me" Matthew 16:24, etc). :brow:
Not a "word" preached against marital rape or incest, against slavery, against executions, or in favor of thinking for oneself nothing but teachings on how to live self-abegnating lives like "sheep" to be flocked and fleeced by "the shepherd" for his piously mysterious (i.e. "revealed") purpose.
Idolatry. Familial/sectarian indoctrination. Masochistic gullibility (re: conversion).
We have no knowledge of how he spoke or what he said.
Paul spoke with what he claimed was the authority of Christ but did not call him a god.
Quoting Wayfarer
This was common practice for the rabbis's dialectical interpretations. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus stressed the letter of the Law.
Quoting Wayfarer
More than likely this was the influence of Paul on the gospels, and reflected the split and growing animosity between Jesus' Jewish disciples and the followers of Paul. In addition, there were several Jewish sects with different social and religious beliefs and practices.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is from Leviticus 19:18.
Quoting Wayfarer
There were stories of other Jewish miracle workers in addition to the stories of Jesus.
Do scientists have a gulf between theory and practice? If science says plutonium is deadly, do some scientists nonetheless carry plutonium in the pockets? Religion claims possession of the Truth (with a capital "T") but I'd say science respects the truth much more than religion.
No idea. Probably. Science in theory is meant to help and enhance humanity and yet scientists everywhere are engaged in activities of death and destruction. From denying climate change to building and designing chemical and nuclear weapons. Is scientism another gulf between theory and practice. A case of theory overreach at the expense of truth?
Quoting Art48
I hear you, but some here might call that scientism. In what sense does science deal in truths? Religion deals in different truths - foundational meaning and morality. Science, as we all learn, can't give us an ought from an is.
Okay. I see we are at the boundaries of the other's perspective.
Yes, another thread.
I will read your selected essays if you read The Concept of Anxiety.
:up:
If you have a good link to a pdf, please PM it. It's on my list.
I think that's what was implied in what he actually said, especially in the Gospel of Thomas.
Also that's why I like the Zen attitude towards the Buddha:
"If you meet Buddha in your path cut of his head immediately"
Cleanse the mouth thoroughly when you utter the word Buddha.
There is one word I do not like to hear; that is, Buddha.
If I had been with Buddha at the moment of his uttering this, I would surely have struck him dead with one blow and thrown the corpse into the maw of a hungry dog.
Their goal is Buddha and yet they are aware that it is also their biggest obstacle.
I think you and I are very much on the same page. I'll drag in some psychoanalysis: the son must kill the father and lay with the mother (find this project dormant in himself). (Daughters can have an equivalent story.) Belief in the 'Buddha' projects authority and responsibility and realization Elsewhere, turns spirituality into that bonechina dinner set that no is 'really' supposed to eat with. Such 'transference' is probably necessary. Our plastic brains are wired to 'fall in love' (project that 'unnamable' X) on charisma. In animal terms, a boy will likely project on his big father with the deep voice. We begin so helpless that of course we reach for intercessors.
At the risk of diverting this thread, I'd say that science + goals can give us oughts.
Think of science as a map. I want to go from A to B. There are rivers, mountains, and private property between A and B. So, I look at the map and plan my optimum route. If I want to get to B as quickly as possible, I ought to drive the turnpike. If I want to take a scenic route, I ought to take highway H. Etc.
:... experience-based goals (i.e. hypothetical imperatives). :up:
Some "goals" are moral and some are not; how do we tell the difference?
Human flourishing is one, admittedly vague, answer. But it's far superior to the Bible's "morality" which says "witches" are to be put to death and which gives specific rules for the buying and selling of slaves.
Sure, I think that is the Sam Harris position in The Moral Landscape.
Quoting Art48
Indeed - a divine command theory is a morality segregated from what is right and wrong. Socrates licked this one in Euthyphro.
Quoting Fooloso4
I think it's possible that, supposing there was some fundamental truth, or logos, a prime "Logic" or reason that underpins the true nature of reality and the true basis for actual knowledge, and Jesus was a man who encountered/came face to face with that notion...
... Then he was an ordinary man with extraordinary insight. Empowered by pure precision reasoning ability.
Id imagine it as a bit like having a tongue that could cut through basically anyone and everyone's BS and separate delusion/false justifications from pure unadulterated truth.
This extraordinary or super rare ability could easily be misinterpreted as miracles through the centuries of exaggeration of his character, translation of scripture and evolution of language use/semantics. Perhaps "raising the dead" is akin to something like revealing a lack of true "death" of self, only death of current identity. Or perhaps "multiplying bread" was adding profundity or "a delicious zest/taste" to even the most common or basic staples, enhancing the sensorium/joy of awareness.
If that's the case then we can understand where the holy trinity would come from. The father (Logos) is mirrored or perfectly parallelled by the sons action: behaviour and voice (a regular man speaking and behaving of pure knowledge of logos).
In that way it would be sort of like if the universe had a voice and could communicate directly to people through a conduit (jesus).
The holy spirit then is the link between logos and the son (Man), something like "state of mind" or "consciousness" or "free will" to know and speak of the logos or not.
Finally, if such a man like Jesus was indeed of incredible insight, this would scare the living sh*t out of anyone who's trying to hide something. It would be like judgement day - imagine an acute clarity of reasoning (wave of elevated awareness) rippling out from mind to mind, person to person.
"A spreading of the word (logos)"
Where all the books are balanced. Grand accountancy.
Seeing as lying relies on deception, having some truth bearer around does not bode well for deceptors.
So naturally he was in mortal danger. But I would suspect he already knew this. It's logical.
Any great leader (truth speaker - knowledgeable because they know the truth and moral because they speak the truth to empower others) faces the prospect of assassination/martyrdom.
They don't neccesarily want to be leaders because they know what responsibility that truly carries. Meanwhile immoral people are "leader wannabes" because they love power but aren't prepared to bear the responsability.
I hear you. He had some truly atrocious teachings.
For instance, the Old Testament in two places says a child who curses a parent must be put to death.
Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death.Exodus 21:17
For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother; his blood is upon him.Leviticus 20:9
There are two places in the New Testament where Jesus specifically cites those Old Testament laws with approval!
For God commanded, Honor your father and your mother, and, Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.Matt 15:4
For Moses said, Honor your father and your mother; and, Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.Mark 7:10
And his teaching about disease being the result of sin and demons set medicine back a few centuries.
But I don't deny he had some good teachings, too.
Can you blame his tendencies though? Oppressive tax collectors, leadership that was nominally Jewish (Herod), and ones that were flaunting pagan symbols (Roman standards) and corrupt priesthood. However, the status quo may have been better than the revolt that resulted in destruction and exile. It's all about context. We tend to universalize it. Paul seemed to start that trend.
Right, but I was just wondering if his teachings were mainly a response to what was taking place. At least, as much as we can surmise of the ever-so-buried "historical" Jesus of 1st century Judea under the rule of Herod Antipas and Roman procurators.
Cool. We are on the same page I think. That's all I was getting at. So I guess to put it together with your other ideas of better philosophers, I don't think Jesus' ideas were even really relevant beyond his immediate surroundings and the people of the community of that time and space. Greek philosophers, like Plato, and such were meant to be doing universalized philosophy. They were intentionally creating theories of metaphysics and epistemology that though came out of a particular culture, was less relevant to "being Greek" at some time an place, and more about just "understanding the world" (however wrong or right they might be about their ideas of the world).
I agree. Jesus did not start the messianic movement. It is a mode of escapism that was transformed into what some of the hopeful took to be the truth in action, while others still wait.
There is what I take to be a reasonable and not necessarily secular alternative, human responsibility.
Yeah. It does seem that he formed communal societies of sorts where pooling resources and charity and such was a thing. Perhaps, this was in imitation of Israelite prophetic books and their exhortations of corrupt kings. Clearly, he is borrowing from John the Baptists' ideas, who in turn seems to have cultivated a slight innovation or variation of sects like the Dead Sea Scroll sect.
However, his message of the Son of Man, and better days at a future Kingdom of God that will be ushered in "very soon", seem to undermine his more earthly efforts to establish proto-communes of sorts (if he did that at all). My guess is he was educated to some extent as a Hillelite Pharisee, based on his interpretations of Law. At some point he joined John's more "action over theory" Essenic splinter group and essentially carried those ideas out mixing it with his Pharisaic understanding of following Mosaic law. The unfortunate part of being mixed up with John's ideas is the idea of an immanent End of Times coming soon. Thus, again, the communal aspects were thwarted by the apocalyptic aspects.
I do realize this is all very speculative, but using Occam's Razor to the context of time and place. Clearly Galileans and Judeans of the lower classes (the Jews of 1st century Palestine in general) were not doing well under Roman and Herodian rule, and hopeful figures talking of better times and more charitable acts, and elites being last, seemed appealing. I'll give him a B- for effort and balancing the two ideas. He would have gotten an A if he stuck with the action and less of the "Son of Man coming at the End of Times" :wink:.
With regard to an alternative I was thinking of a movement in American Judaism beginning in the 19th century: "tikkun olam, a Hebrew phrase meaning repairing the world.. Rather than a messianic figure who arrives, it is up to the people to act.
Whatever Jesus might have taught, the crucifixion became the central focus, and Paul's Christ the central teaching. It was a much more attractive story promising Heaven on Earth to everyone without requiring any of the work or effort of following the Law.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I agree. I think this is why Paul closed his eyes and turned his back. He decided the Law does not matter. Do your best, which is not much given his opinion of man's weakness and sinful nature, but don't worry. Be joyful it is all about to end at any moment and the faithful will be saved.
Indeed, probably a better version, but let's not anachronize it to Jesus' time when ideas of a messiah were very fluid. Son of Man / Enoch tradition seemed to have popularity. I believe Son of Man is/was still popular in even Hasidic and Kabbalistic writings. The Metatron tradition probably came from this. Merkabah mysticism was popular in the early centuries of the common era in Rabbinic circles, for example. Metatron was a central figure in Enoch 3, and associated with Enoch as his transformed angel counterpart. That tells of Rabbi Ishmael's "ascent" into the divine realms, etc. This is much later literature though. Certainly parts of Enoch 1 were around the time of Jesus as is attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Anyways, my point here is don't discount apocalypticism as an important element of even mainstream "Judaisms" of 1st century Judea, even ones that eventually became Rabbinic Judaism post-Temple. The Son of Man was the angel that judged people at the end of times and wrote good and bad deeds, etc. Again, associated with Enoch and then Metatron. So, this is all to say, Jesus was probably not something akin to a post-Enlightenment Reformed Jew :wink:.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yeah certainly this was all original to Paul's ideas. He had the bizarre notion that you had to be perfect to follow the laws, so why bother. Nowhere before that did anyone presume such a thing. Rather, that was the point of constantly atoning at every holiday, the Sabbath, in prayer, at synagogues, etc. It was a way of constantly trying to follow the rules more closely. You didn't have to be perfect at it. I think gnostic ideas preceded Paul (as can be seen in writings akin to Philo), and Paul kind of took smatterings of Greco-Roman gnostic / Platonic ideas along with a good dose of Greco-Roman-Near Eastern resurrecting god cultic practices that were popular around the area of Tarsus and beyond.
I agree. It was intended as a follow up to my comment:
Quoting Fooloso4
The hope for a messiah, whether it is the second coming, or even a bloated orange savior, is still with us.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, this was the Messianic age. But I think it was Jesus through Paul's Christ who reversed this from the few who are righteous to all who have faith in and are saved by Christ. It was, I think, because of this that Jesus was believed to be the true messiah and all the others false. Without Paul I think it very likely the movement would have died out.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Plus a great talent for synthesis and rhetoric.
Agree with all of this. I am interested in your ideas on what the Son of Man (or son of man?) was at that 1st century time. Was it later interpolation or pre-Christian? I tend to think there was an odd element associated with the angel that came as fan-fiction literature from the Book of Daniel. Daniel could be interpreted as "son of man" meaning "the elect of Israel" (or just Israel), or it could have meant some real super-hero type angelic entity, The Son of Man.
Clearly it is from Daniel 7: 9-28.
Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. https://biblehub.com/matthew/15-11.htm
You can break yesterday's food taboos, but your heart must be pure, as manifested here by what you say. But the essence is behind or beyond every external demonstration,
[i]For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within which passes show,
These but the trappings and the suits of [s]woe[/s] virtue[/i]
https://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/that-within-which-passes-show
Was this move from Jesus to Hamlet necessary ? Did Christianity contribute to a tradition of radical interiority? Infinite space in a nutshell ? God is love. God is a feeling. God becomes indeterminate. Supremely immaterial. Transconceptual. Music.
[quote=Feuerbach]
The true, albeit hidden, sense of the saying Feeling is the organ of the divine is that feeling is the noblest, the most excellent, i.e., the divine, in man. How could you perceive the divine through feeling if feeling itself were not divine? The divine can be known only through that which is itself divine God can be known only through himself. The Divine Being perceived by feeling is in reality nothing but the being of feeling itself which is enraptured and fascinated by itself feeling that is blissful in itself, intoxicated with joy.
This goes to explain that where feeling is made the organ of the infinite, the subjective essence of religion, the object of religion loses its objective value.
[/quote]
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/essence/ec01_1.htm
This sounds like Paul. It claims that the Law and the laws of Kosher are not important. Jesus' disciples split with him over this. They reached a compromise in which Paul would go away and preach elsewhere.
Quoting plaque flag
I think the majority of influence came from the various Greek and Roman schools of philosophy and Judaism. The latter at least in part due to persecution.
Based on past conversations, you know much more about this. A few general comments on gods and men. The status of some divine or semi-divine being is not clear. There is mash ups - did Jacob wrestle with God or an angel or a man (Genesis 32:24-30)? And smash ups - the sons of God and the daughters of men (Genesis 6:2).
Actually, it's put in the mouth of the Jesus. I do remember talk of this stuff by Paul as well, and maybe that affected what got written ? Christ is the end of the law. I find that moving.
It is in direct contradiction to the Sermon on the Mount and the letter of the Law. My guess is the influence of Paul, which can b seen throughout the synoptic gospels.
One does not have to decide about the limits of the law (in regard to Paul's view) to see how Augustine made the issue about a personal choice.
And the idea that a person was a locus for changing or not changing things became a thing, set against a background of relentless continuity. The City of God versus the City of Men.
I am not ascribing to that view but think it is closer to what Feuerbach was talking about than the Gospels taken by themselves.
Oh I did notice the contradictions in that protagonist. Your guess is plausible.
Even with the contradictions (because of them?), it's a powerful tale.
Can you explain ?
Quoting Paine
To be clear, I did rip that Feuerbach quote out of context. I was also thinking of this, which never fails to move me.
[quote = Nietzsche]
If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this: that he regarded only subjective realities as realities, as truths that he saw everything else, everything natural, temporal, spatial and historical, merely as signs, as materials for parables. The concept of the Son of God does not connote a concrete person in history, an isolated and definite individual, but an eternal fact, a psychological symbol set free from the concept of time. The same thing is true, and in the highest sense, of the God of this typical symbolist, of the kingdom of God, and of the sonship of God. ...the word Son expresses entrance into the feeling that there is a general transformation of all things (beatitude), and Father expresses that feeling itselfthe sensation of eternity and of perfection.
The kingdom of heaven is a state of the heartnot something to come beyond the world or after death. The whole idea of natural death is absent from the Gospels: death is not a bridge, not a passing; it is absent because it belongs to a quite different, a merely apparent world, useful only as a symbol. The hour of death is not a Christian ideahours, time, the physical life and its crises have no existence for the bearer of glad tidings.... The kingdom of God is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a millenniumit is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere....
...
This bearer of glad tidings died as he lived and taughtnot to save mankind, but to show mankind how to live. It was a way of life that he bequeathed to man: his demeanour before the judges, before the officers, before his accusershis demeanour on the cross. He does not resist; he does not defend his rights; he makes no effort to ward off the most extreme penaltymore, he invites it.... And he prays, suffers and loves with those, in those, who do him evil....
[/quote]
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19322/19322-h/19322-h.htm
Jesus triumphs over the Resentment Industrial Complex. He transcends low emotions, fearless and loving hero of the flaming heart....
So sayeth Nietzsche, this great symbolist and ironist and inverter of values.
What is this way of life?
(33)
The question immediately arises: can we live this way? Such a way of life, if taken literally, is a turning of the will to power, the will to life, against itself.
(32)
Nietzsche's Jesus, the only Christian (39) is Dionysian.
:up:
Yes. To be clear, Nietzsche's Christ is a literary creation. Nietzsche himself, as he let us know him through his books, is also such a protagonist/fiction/mask. No less than Hamlet he overheard himself, and in the same way he was then his only worthy audience. Summer porn posthumously.
The triumph over resentment ? The triumph over system ? There's nothing there to refute. It looks like subrational or transconceptual mysticism to me --an extremely negative theology. Even the concepts God and Father are mere 'formal indications.'
[quote=Feuerbach]
How could you perceive the divine through feeling if feeling itself were not divine? The divine can be known only through that which is itself divine God can be known only through himself. The Divine Being perceived by feeling is in reality nothing but the being of feeling itself which is enraptured and fascinated by itself feeling that is blissful in itself, intoxicated with joy.
[/quote]
[quote=Nietzsche]
He no longer needed any formula or ritual in his relations with Godnot even prayer. The kingdom of heaven is a state of the heartnot something to come beyond the world or after death. ... The kingdom of God is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a millenniumit is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere....
[/quote]
This reminds me of Kojeve. This Christ is not unlike the skeptic who escapes into a 'free' interiority from the risk of life required for the attainment of genuine, worldly freedom. We philosophers are the heirs of this antithetical slavish ideology. For us the balcony. For kings the stage.
Paul expected the world to change forever and the sooner the better.
By the time of Augustine, waiting for the change required an adjustment of expectations. A dual citizenship of sorts was encouraged. The cleanliness of the inside of the cup compared to the outside is now entangled with the future of the world.
:up:
Ah. OK. So the end of the world was running late.
Or a beginning of a new one required more work than originally anticipated.
Project Management is born.
What do you make of the end of the world ? Is it important to your vision of Christianity ? Was/is it a wrong thing to expect ?
Christianity has come to be different things at different times to different people. Placing Feuerbach in a more specific context was a thought I had about how the personal became something different than what was expressed before.
The basis upon which that observation is made is not the same as how I see the matter by myself. I am not going to do that here.
What does it mean to be divine?
Best description of how to describe the 2000 year Christian phenomenon:
That's from a much longer video of course explaining the evolution of the Israelite god(s) into THE Israelite God. Most of us who know Biblical archeology and ancient Near Eastern literature are familiar with it. But that particular quote was relevant here.
[i]Ah,?solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.[/i]
https://genius.com/Philip-larkin-dayss-annotated
As an extremely wise man once said, theology itself is god. But seriously we could spend centuries on this, which is why we already have, we who are our past in the mode of no longer exactly having to be it. The big questions are theological in a generalized sense of the word. 'God' [ Das Heilige ] is that to which we defer and aspire, possibly proclaiming our atheism or ironism along the path. The divine predicates are human virtues. But what is human ? What is virtue ?
[quote = Blake]
Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire, who arose before an Angel that sat on a cloud, and the Devil uttered these words: The worship of God is, honouring His gifts in other men each according to his genius, and loving the greatest men best. Those who envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there is no other God.
It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from God only.
In Hell, all is self-righteousness; there is no such thing there as forgiveness of sin. He who does forgive sin is crucified as an abettor of criminals, and he who performs works of mercy, in any shape whatever, is punished and, if possible, destroyednot through envy, or hatred, or malice, but through self-righteousness, that thinks it does God service, which god is Satan.
...
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
...
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of Eternity too great for the eye of man.
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
...
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
[/quote]
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Life_of_William_Blake_(1880),_Volume_2/Prose_writings/A_Vision_of_the_Last_Judgment
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45315/45315-h/45315-h.htm
God is the last bastion for many to have superstitions. Even those who are agnostic/atheists probably retain some odd fears and ritualistic prohibitions from just being exposed to it in youth. And of course here we are talking a particular brand.. but the other brands also instill this too.
The average (and even not so average) dog has a better experience with the sublime than we would ever have. All the rituals cannot make up for that.
Guilt is a function of living in a social setting with conceptualizing brains that internalize external values.
Guilt connected to a divinity and mediated and quelled through ritual is another phenomena which the ancients thought of and we retained.
The idea of "keeping the rituals" in the context of the Israelite god was more about group cohesion. Usual tribal ingroup/outgroup stuff. "Our" deity wants this from "us". We are his "chosen" for doing so.
Paul had the odd notion of being "Saved". This changed it from tribal to primordial. That is to say, it had the tinge of gnostic idea that this world has been corrupted and somehow an atonement from a sacrifice of a person rights this for everyone. This is simply a foreign/alien concept that hijacked a tribal deity and made it universal. Of course the non-Jews he tried to convert took to this. They already had Greek notions of mystery cults, gnostic notions from Plato's Forms, and the like. They wouldn't care (and why would they) about a small tribal god that wasn't their own nor about their internal history of kings who were conquered by Babylonians, Persians, etc. That was "their" history. If you are a Corinthian, or a Ephesian, or a Roman, that literally, matters nothing to you. But Paul found a master key that used that tribal deity and interlayed the Greco-Roman features that appealed most to people's hopes, fears, guilt-complexes, and the rest. He also had to teach them they were doomed, so that he had the cure to save them. So odd. So odd.
A few scattered comments
In The Gay Science he asks:
From Epicurus the idea of gods as blessed being who are unperturbed.
From Marcus Aurelius the soul as the inner citadel.
From Epictetus:
I agree with most of what you say.
I tend to view gods in terms of group egos, a tribal egoideal. As you mention, a local god can be developed into a global, universal god. This seems to include (as god is a mirror and target) the idea of a global, universal human being. Secular humanism (Feuerbach's kind, basically) offers this kind of 'god' (our own perfected or at least improved selves waiting for us in the future.) One can read Hegel and Strauss as transforming pessimistic Christianity (by analogy) into a worldly, optimistic humanism (a religion of technical and moral progress.) 'History is a machine that feeds on brave young men and shits freedom.'
Some might, but I would not say all. Meet Nucky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5XNSETB5MY
'You don't know me, James. You never did. I. am not. seeking. forgiveness.'
Becker and Sartre have what I take as a deeper view of (existential) guilt. The shame of having a body, inasmuch as it can fail, is the shame of not being a god, the shame of being vulnerable. As hunger steers us toward food, so does this shame steer us toward defensible positions. Consider adversarial dialogue, tarrying with the negative, incorporating death and devastation, as the path to being less wrong. War, the father of all things, does not exclude cooperation. Indeed we are supreme is just this, we hosts of a graveleaping software which gathers the trial and error of the generations, which we are now compressing into images of our own divinity, possibly our spiritual heirs.
Good comments.
:smirk: Mild Psychosis vs the Ossified!
:starstruck:
Afar tenure knows.
Seventy new fur chins.
Pair of eyes lost.
I don't know. I think a welltreated dog is more reliably happy, but do they attain the same heights ? I don't see how one can answer with more than a guess, but my hunch is no. We have music. We have philosophy. We have sin.
I've argued elsewhere if sin is doing something against God's will, then it is impossible to knowing sin because God hasn't bothered to make his (or her) will known. All we have is various preachers giving us contradictory stories about what God wants and doesn't want.
But do we know that sin exists? If all we have are humans telling stories about what god wants and doesn't want...
We can define sin as doing something against the will of God.
But if God doesn't exist or if God doesn't care one way or the other what we do, then sin becomes a concept like unicorn or luminiferous aether.
The will of God means either the will of man vested by man with absolute authority, or what happens beyond our ability to comprehend, as in the story of Job.
It's interesting to me to know when the Yawhist cult eventually took over the Israelite/Judaic religion completely. It seems like a contingent of "prophets" (reformer-philosopher-shamans) were the start of it around Jerusalem and spread from there. It wasn't until the Maccabees that the dominance of the "Yahweh alone" group took over as THE dominant narrative of Judaic religious and historical expression (replete with Mosaic law being followed by even the everyday Jewish peasant, not just a small contingent). I'd like to know that transformation because with that transformation came the ideas of that small contingent of prophetic reformers that is the basis for ideas of sin and repentance as we know it in Western culture (at least in their variations of the three religions. Judaism being the closest obviously to the original prophetic version of following Mosaic laws and repenting if not doing it correctly at holidays, prayer, and mainly sacrifices during Temple times.).
That is to say, just because the practice is ancient superstitions, doesn't mean it wasn't innovative. What those shaman-reformer-prophets did was combine a particular deity (El-Yawheh) with the notion of universal laws of behavior, with a large emphasis on ethical laws of behavior. Not "hitting the mark". Greece for example, seemed to separate ethics from religion. Of course, this attachment of the deity with godhead was a long process. When I say "prophets" I mean the reforming kind like Isaiah and Jeremiah of the 7th century or so BCE. Older historians used to call 7-5th Century BCE the Axial Age, because ethics and how to live the "good life" became paramount in all major civilizations around that time (Greek philosophy, Jewish prophetic writings, the Buddha and Pali Canon, the Upanishads, etc.). That prophetic school represented an elite scribal class that was usually centered around (or against) the king of Judah, but then spread as I said much later, starting perhaps with Ezra but really being fully implemented in the Maccabees. I'd like to know how that campaign looked though of Hasmoneans promoting Yahweh alone, prophetic school version of Judaic expression. Archeology points to it being widespread, only then.
I was being playful. I don't really believe in sin. Let me add some context from Oscar Wilde.
[i]Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.
Young women of the present day seem to make it the sole object of their lives to be always playing with fire.
A bad woman is the sort of woman a man never gets tired of.[/i]
Perhaps you can guess that I'm positing [the delusion of ] transgression, biting into forbidden fruit, wipe coffin panties, as one of the wicked joys of life.
:up:
up of a smoke
:up:
We can maybe add that one man needs to hides this from some other men like that wonderful wizard of Oz.
It is precisely that we have music and philosophy (and other conceptualizing-phenomena) that we don't ever reach the sublime. All this hoooha, to try to reach a state a dog has lying in the sun. Again, this goes back to my thread about our break with nature. We can't go back. We are exiled for good.
Schopenhauer discusses the sublime in art and nature. The sense of awe, etc. But I guess I also mean it in a sense of complete oneness and tranquility with being, more like his asceticism than his art philosophy. That is to say, the ascetics and the artistic vision are brief glimpses of what the animal has readily available.
We have sleep at least, but then our species even has the torment of insomnia. We just can't find peace.
We know of the human condition, and yet because we know of the human condition, and we know the consequences of putting more people into it by procreating, procreation simply represents forced conversion. If we posit a reason for why we must have children, we have already admitted that we can have reasons, and thus we can decide to do any number of things, including not force converting other people into the human condition. Any ankle-biting and gnashing of teeth of the "positivity that humanity's achievements and its necessity in continuing" against the pessimists, is yet more missionizing. The pessimists can never force convert though. Not doing something to someone who is not there makes this obviously so. It only works one way. Forced conversion only happens when someone becomes the subject. Thus, only one way represents not force converting.
Where we differ is understanding the sublime in terms of relaxation. Allow me a little crudity. Consider the buildup to orgasm. That's excitement before a great relaxation. There is no joy in the tavern as on the road thereto. Actually there is joy in the tavern, sometimes, but the aphorism gets the deliciousness of expectation right.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I suggest thinking of reasongiving as a layer on top of something more doglike and automatic. I think we both agree that our hardware (our biology) underdetermines our mode of being, and that just this is our wicked and tormented genius. We have no essence, to overstate the case. We are what we take ourselves to be. We (as bodies) are vessels for tribal software, including the 'illusion'/convention of the discursive ego that must justify itself before the others in a space of reasons which is equivalently a game of scorekeeping. Forgive me for X, because of Y. It's true that A, because of B. You can't say E, because you already said F, which implies not E.
It seems to me that you think we can project this scorekeeping structure unproblematically on the species as a global tribe subject to humanistic/rational norms. Fair enough, but perhaps justice is a dissipative structure, the kind of thing that helps a tribe flourish and expand. Eliminating evil by eliminating what makes evil evil (the good or value it harms) is questionable.
It's reifying of what we don't have. Sorry. It's like philosophy is always trying to give consolation prizes. I just don't engage in that kind of putting off of what we don't have to feel a bit better. If you lose, it's better to make the losing a good thing, so as not to feel at such a loss and continue on continuing on, trying and trying.
Quoting plaque flag
Correct. If I am for anything then, it is so everyone can get to the natural terminus of collective ennui. Ghetto-thinking, tribal thinking, hunting-gathering thinking, redneck-thinking, middle-class-gardening-with-lemonade-in-bakyard-thinking, and even elitism of academia are all but variations of ignorance leading to cul-de-sacs away from the ultimate cul-de-sac.
Quoting plaque flag
Again, I am just waiting for the collective ennui. That is, all roads are exhausted and not enacting more pain on others because one has notions of reasons to do so, things as you are suggesting like "flourshing". You know who really loves the idea that you think you are here to "flourish"? The one who makes his living off of your labor. The one who doesn't mind if someone else suffers for their cause.
If you look at my aggresive critique of Bunge, you'll see (I hope) this I'm not a member of the go life movement, no more than I 'must' be, given human evolution. I respect antinatalism as one of the most radical kinds of 'antithetical' counterculture. I take poison as my icon because questioning the values of longevity and survival seems like a cornerstone of critical thought. Death is leverage. If I must be respectable, I cannot be a philosopher (not in my pet sense of the word.)
:smirk:
We are largely if not completely aligned. Boredom is an aristocratic vice. We write within a peculiar intoxicating genre. Undecidable poisoncure blisspuke.
of her might had potty
:up:
You caught my typo in the quote (pet sense of the world).
Yes, and I am as greedy and wicked as that sevencrowned beast that rises from the sea, global Kapital, the whore of babble on, even if part of me, the tamed meatbot, is horrified by that.
:up:
I agree, but I don't think antinatalism or my own pour of poison escapes that structure. Zapffe and Cioran are tall strong drinks for bold bad bleak boys. Look at me, ma. No plans.
True enough, but I guess, at what point can we distinguish between consolations and telling it just how it is? Precisely because they aren't trying to make lemonade, might help you distinguish that it isn't just to provide a consolation prize. Rather, it is just giving the glib report and you have to make of it what you will.
It may be respected in other ways of course depending on the nature of interpretation.
Happy Easter
Lamenting the aristocratic vice of aristocratic vice tracks with aristocratic vice too. Hopefully pessimism is accessible to all.
:up:
To be clear, though, I'm not lamenting. I feel good, bro. For now.
That's a tricky one. If we say it's all just consolations (lies we tell ourselves), then that itself is such a lie. I hold myself to rational norms, and so do you. I think there's something noble in that, even as we question the ugly origins of this noble conformity in a demonic and irrational will-to-live. In my view, people were rightly freaked out by Darwin. That was maybe the intellectual revolution. The current AI one is perhaps comparable though, as it makes explicit what Darwinism gently implied, that we ourselves are machines, despite the glory of our intellect.
And yet and yet the problem of the meaning of being... of wondering at a tautology. Something is here.
Yes, but how do we know whether or not god cares about what humans do? We have no source for sin except for the words of people regarding a particular version of god. So if we doubt that we can know what god wants for us - as you argued earlier - how can we know the idea of sin is even a thing for a god?
IME, stupidity, or maladaptive habits which incorrigibly undermine oneself, is the only "sin".