Determinism

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1461

Don’t know who is being quoted there…but I’ll play along.
Maybe, I say maybe, the entire narrative about Adam & Eve and how God gave the ‘free-will’ was really a way of explaining how an absolute one-god, that made all in his image, would be capable of creating evil.
Read the story.
He gives a gift, called ‘free-will’ and then places a restriction upon it - so automatically it isn’t free at all, because his will usurps theirs.
A way of forcing them to sacrifice their will to his, because freely exercising it comes at a severe and absolute cost: infinity of suffering in Hell - loss of Paradise, a.k.a. Garden of Eden.

That’s would be like telling inmates in a penitentiary that they are free, to do and go anywhere…except outside the prison, and that if they ever dared to go outside that they would be sent to an eternity of isolated confinement.

Notice the prohibited fruit, representing awareness. So, remain obtuse and ignorant, and you can do anything you like.

The Christians realized the self-defeating implications of their description of God as omnipotent and omniscient and man made in his image, so they had to come up with a reason to blame man for evil.
The Serpent, Satan, is a representation of Prometheus.
Through this bullshit story, man is made the cause of his own suffering, and the root of the evils he must suffer and make amends of.

Free-will, properly understood, is not absolute, nor is it a method of self-absolution, because ti begins with placing the blame on one’s self, even for not correctly understanding the nature of a friend, a trusted ally, who turns on you.
The first one to blame is self, for choosing and for failing to choose.
Choice is the pragmatic expression of freedom. It isn’t some abstraction, defined in prose and poetics, nor is it non-existent, because ti is experienced - observable, testable, falsifiable.

Every choice participating in the determination of one’s own future options.

1462

So your argument is based on your interpretation of a Bible story rather than how Christians have historically interpreted it and applied it.

1463

Yes…Christians are brainwashed. They are told what to think.

It appears the Bible is pro-family and pro-life, and pro free-will but it is not.
Consider the other narrative from a pragmatic perspective.
A wandering preacher, wannabe Messiah, goes around taking young males away form their families, which at the time was a severe loss that risked their survival. Consider the symbolism of God - the idea - usurping the father as head of the family.

You can google anti-family quotes. I did a while ago, but I can’t be bothered in this forum.
I’m here to have fun, in this circus.

But you can research yourself.
Biblical allegories imitated ancient Oracle decrees - a form Nostradamus also adopted and many charlatans - some that come to this forum - have sued to imply insight and mystical powers and predictive powers.
The form uses allegory to appear ro be saying something when ti is saying nothing, ro to appear to be saying one thing when ti si saying the exact opposite.
Three layers:
Text
Context
Subtext

Three layers of meaning, corresponding to body/nervous system/mind and/or physis/motive/metaphysis, past/present/future.

The Bible is an anti-family text.
The males - fathers - are mere representations of the on true father. Males are not real fathers, but means for the one-father to seed his female concubines - mediators.
Consider the story of how Mary got inseminated…a rape scene, that makes Joseph a cuckolded husbund.

1464

Christianity, therefore Abrahamism, is Absolute Tyranny, as-if there were one (Male) Ruler over humanity forever.

This is an abstraction and impossibility of course. Abrahamic ideologies ‘solve’ the Paradox by extending it beyond life, or beyond “one Ruler”. So, when any living embodiment or representation of ‘God’ may possibly exist, it doesn’t matter, because “God” is beyond life (immortal). Thus the ideology is representational. And all humans are forms of and degrees of impostors.

I interpret Abrahamism as how Jews originally viewed the Roman Caesar and imperial class, Aristocracy. It was their (per)version of it. To them, at the time, the Rulers could do pretty much anything they wanted to them, after being conquered. And so, refusing the foreign rule of the ‘earthly’ Graeco-Romans, imitated and copied the Rule, as an idea, which then could be inverted and reversed. So rather than being emasculated and accepting the foreign rule, Jews created their own Aristocratic class (the Cohens) and also inverted the Roman Imperialism and title of Caesar (God), to suit and fit themselves. They then convinced other slaves and victims of their “One-God”, as a means of subversion against the early Roman Empire, and then later as subversion against the Roman Catholic Diocese. This is a (memetic) battle that’s been waging for Centuries.

Romans were not the first people to conquer Jerusalem and enslave the Jews, too. The Egyptians were before the Romans, as were the Persians, from whence the Zoroastrian and Monotheistic elements were taken and absorbed into Judaic and then Abrahamic ideology.

1465

Abrahamism is spiritual nihilism, using language to dominate from the inside (esoteric), out (exoteric) - from mind (ideology, dogma) to dominate body (physical).
It does so by seducing the individual who feels this dominance as pleasing, because it offers an alternate reality to escape the reality that remains indifferent, to his needs/desires, and threatens him.

It does not coerce, it seduces, by exploiting the existential anxieties of the individual.

1466

i’m going to have to disagree, gentlemen, and propose the contrary. all religious belief - whether in the form of animism, paganism, deism, polytheism, henotheism, or monotheism - is instead an intellectual attempt to escape nihilism rather then an expression of nihilism. each and all of these people are trying to give a purpose and meaning to life that transcends their mortality. the details of each form of religion are arbitrary and of little importance when this common feature is recognized. and the extent of the reach of a religion depends solely on its usefulness as a tool for controlling larger or smaller numbers of people. you either have great big mind fucks like the abrahamic religions that are more useful for regulating vast numbers of people, or you have little mind fucks like the pagan religions used to regulate smaller societies. the reasons why the monotheisms won is because those kinds of models resolve logical problems with the omnipotence and omniscience of dueling gods. and when you have a billion people to control, you can’t afford to have any uncertainty or disagreement among them about the nature of god. this is why the roman ruling classes adopted a monotheism as the official religion.

but this equivocation of abrahamism with nihilism couldn’t be more erroneous. that’s the very shit that saved half the world from nihilism, to be sure.

i think here we have a couple of fellas who like pagan nonsense more than monotheistic nonsense… and you know what we do when we find people who don’t agree with our nonsense. we call them nihilists. and that’s not fair because they’re only doing the same thing your doing; trying to escape nihilism by believing in some brand of baloney.

1467

Master of nil, Abrahamism offered a relief from the absence of absolutes, what is called ‘negative’ about the real world, as though it owes man meaning, purpose, and immortality, or an eternal absolute being that watches over them.
Your mind is seeped in nil.
The absence of god is not a negative; the absence of universal morality is not a negation of morality. Filling this absence with mental projections - using words - is exactly why you declare philosophy at an end.

As usual, you are clueless.
Best stick to the cynical patronizing jokes, and the noise you enjoy and call ‘music’.

1468

It’s interesting how some minds show a selectively skeptical mind.
They comprehend a kindred spirits allusion to ‘contraptions’ - (imagbiguous) - and yet do not recognize them in the Abrahamic narrative projecting them as absolutes that negate reality as it is experienced.
Quick to doubt, and show skeptical vigour, with any use of prose or metaphor, and yet show no such rigour when reading Nietzsche.

Well, not quite “interesting”, more like predictable, and identifying.
Self-Deceit…to protect the ego.

1469

Identifying, yes. Picking a team, then not criticizing that team, even if the team is the supposed anti-team. And then you don’t even really have to even know your own team or guru well. You can just aim their critiques at the other teams. They will notice when the other teams do this, but not when members of their own team do. You’ll notice, for example, that people who mock the religious on the issue of evolution or the Big Bang or whatever often know only the vague outlines of the science, since it is more about being on the right team. Obviously the Abrahamic do this kind of thing, but so do most, regardless of team.

1470

Yes, and?
In all movements there are the laymen, who only understand the bare minimum and how it feels, and the more aware.

Abrahamism feels good because it projects, as an alternate reality, what the experienced reality lacks and the majority need, i.e. absolutes, by any name: certainty, god, oneness, wholeness, universe, completeness, perfection, immortality, universal morality or purpose, freedom, or unfreedom.
They need final indivisible, immutable answers, and they find them in the words of charlatans and peddlers of nil: even if the ‘positive’ variety.

1471

Is the belief in unicorns and centaurs only about picking a team?
If centaurs and unicorns actually existed, would this not negate our experience and understanding of the real world?

To believe in centaurs and unicorns as representations of an imagined construct, and to believe in their literal existence, declaring the cosmos ‘negative’ if it fails to provide evidence of them, is not about picking teams, unless the teams are rationality and superstition, or realism and nihilism.

Now, I can justify a belief in the existence of centaurs and unicorns using obscurantism and occultism, but that would only expose my motives, not their existence.

1472

The ‘and’ was the teamness. Not just the psychological need for absolutes, but the need for the team. I chose the right team, so I am right. I attack from my team. I don’t attack my team. Then the layman, as you put it, identifies with not just the team, but rides on the back of whoever actually does understand the team’s positions and insights, if any. And then also, in addition to the psychological need, and the need for a team, there is the need to be against. To distinguish oneself as not X. This saves actually doing any work yourself. I am not the heathen, the theist, the communist, the capitalist, whatever…and this is enough. Never creating nor extending anything. Never mastering anything.

1473

Not only. But also. Even belief in Satyrs is not just about picking a team. But it is also about picking a team. A pack to take potshots from. To base one’s smugness on the group and any masters or supposed masters in it. To ride on that. To play to the gallery. Over and over.

As if this was making something.

1474

All humans want to belong. We are a social specie.
But which ‘team’, if you insist,’ is more correct, is what matters, not that you belong to a team.
Which team holds more promise, is more aware…

1475

usually i say at this point ‘nuh-uh, you’re the one that’s clueless’, but i understand that this kind of quibbling comes with the territory of philosophy, something i willingly do (sometimes).

you do understand that the recognition of there being no absolute morality binding all people, is so severe, that merely ‘picking a morality’ not only does nothing to relieve mankind of the terrible gravity of the situtation, but even permits it to become worse. and therein lies the irony of your position; what you propose as a solution would only work inclusively, not exclusively, as as such, whether or not the entire world woke up tomorrow and were no longer ‘abrahamic nihilists believing in absolutes’ (whatever that means), wouldn’t make a bit of difference to the circumstances.

fortunately the world’s problems are anything but philosophical. social, economic, political, but not philosophical. you could put any philosophical spin you wanted on the world and you’d never know you were wrong. that’s the beauty of philosophy. you can’t lose when doing it.

for a great majority of people, the fact that there is no god and no universal morality is a tremendous problem. what the world wants is something that is binding for all. if the world took your advice, it’d be no better off than it presently is. what is worthy of philosophy (when i’ve got nothing better to do) is approaching problems on a much larger scale, surveying long distances at a time. i’m not interested in being part of a philosophical alpha male club on a forum or passing PMs back and forth with my pals about how dumb everyone is. i’m here for kicks (like you), and if i find something worth meddling with once in a while, i become bodacious. if not, i just work on my jokes.

what’s so astonishing is that you would spend so many years immersed in philosophical theory that, being either true or false, would only have the most minor significance. and that’s being generous enough to call any of it coherent to begin with. i’m afraid i’m gonna have to file you away with the ecmandus and the jakobs, sir.

1476

How can it be a “tremendous problem” if the “world’s problems are anything but philosophical”?

If you are correct in the first paragraph, then the only problems are social, economic and political and “universal morality” is irrelevant.

1477

One cannot escape nihilism since death is inevitable and our existence is ultimately of zero consequence
Instead one accepts this and so works within it to give ones own life some meaning while one is still here
Denying reality by creating absolutes which are unfalsiable is most definitely not the way to be doing this

Belonging to a tribe is not necessarily helping either because it will not immunise one against the inevitable
Moral or intellectual superiority counts for absolutely nothing when you are dead and we are all going to die
Better to be an individual and think for yourself because that way there are fewer psychological chains holding you down

Rather than choose a belief system or simply avoid thinking about it until one has to one can seek another approach and this is what I do
I accept the inevitability of death but see it as a positive rather than a negative because it is the end of suffering in all of its many forms
I do not see it as a mere interval to an imaginary Utopia like religion does nor do I wish it was not there because it makes me feel uncomfortable

As with all limitations the solution is not in pretending it does not exist but instead seeking a practical means of circumventing it in some way
Problems get solved using logic and empiricism not metaphysics or ignorance which are entirely unsuitable in dealing with the human condition

When the abyss is staring at you the only thing you should be doing do is staring right back at it with both eyes wide open

1478

If I beat my cat, then it’s not “of zero consequence” to the cat.

Death ain’t got nothing to do with it.

1479

these problems converge indirectly and create problems that become philosophical, but did not begin as philosophical. take for example the incremental increase of existential anxiety at the thought of mortality that primitive man would experience when he was taught to concern himself with his own salvation… no longer to be satisfied with the fact that his people would live on after him… and that that was good enough to make his life meaningful and give it purpose. couple this with the very real material conditions of struggle that produce what marx called ‘the sigh of the oppressed creature’, and you now have an intellectual cluster fuck that would later become one of the weapons of ruling class philosophy.

the ‘tremendous problem’ here that ‘isn’t philosophical’ is that the same material conditions which produce circumstances in which men are taught to believe that they require salvation - and that they are therefore in an original state of imperfection and/or sinfulness - forces them to bring themselves to the mercy of the state/church to provide for them some relief from the struggle they endure in the drudgery of their material existence. here, what is happening is not yet philosophical, because it isn’t derived from theoretical problems, but real, material problems and conflicts.

and here’s the rub. if it were obvious all men were bound by the same god and the same morality, there never would have arrived a situation in which god and objective morality would be needed so much to prevent the conditions that cause men to need to believe.

read that again. it’s tricky on the first pass.

not until men suffer so much that they have to look for god, is it no longer enough to live a happy, mortal life, satisfied with the fact that the species will continue to exist after they’re gone. so what religion did was accidentally compound the problem so much that it was forced to become philosophical; it divided, created ranks, made the individual unnecessarily critical of himself, gave executive power to those exploiters who prospered from the struggling/suffering of others, and so on. all this was only made possible by a very specific kind of material arrangement of the modes of production of a society that created a profound crisis for the majority of its people.

this nonsense remained and was refined further by the scholastics (ruling class lackeys), finally to be fully dismantled by feuerbach, marx and engels in the 19th century. there really is no philosophy behind belief in god (for how can you believe something that you’re not entirely clear about, in the first place). rather its an anthropomorphic projection of human nature that alienates man from himself even more than the original alienation he was already experiencing in his class based society. a magnificent intellectual cluster fuck that would become both the disease and the treatment of the oppressed.

and why does it still exist today? because of philosophy.

1480

well yeah, but damn dude… did you have to say it?

i propose a rational hedonism along the lines of spinoza’s thinking as something to give us purpose. how can i live that will somehow contribute to greater happiness for people who live after me. i mean what else is there to have as a purpose? and silly little shortsighted shit like nationalism would only work for a few thousand years at most, anyway, so it’s got to be something pertaining to Man with a capital M. not ‘these’ men or ‘those’ men, but Man, Men (women too. sorry).

of course my detractors are gonna be all ‘but that’s vulgar materialism and void of spiritual purpose, yada yada.’ no. they don’t understand. any act of will is given spirit when one is faced with a difficult task. this would be profoundly spiritual precisely because it’s so difficult. it’s the committment that evokes the spirit, right? i mean whevever someone shouts ‘that’s the spirit!’, what do they mean? they mean ‘way to stick it through!’

and believe me, creating the world i have in mind is gonna take some sirius work, and therefore requires some sirius spirit.

meanwhile, i’ll remain a stirnerite nihilist and keep watch for those who have eyes to see a little further into the future. but i can’t be bothered with the little shit that don’t amount to nuthin. i play for big stakes, not nickels and dimes.

rational hedonism. when man merges with machine and sets out across the galaxy to go where no dudes have ever gone before. you get a plan like that together and i’m in. i ain’t tryn to sit around here all day arguing about what the word ‘absolute’ means.