1. Imagine a possible world W where there is no concept of ownership. — frank

This means, we live in a world drenched and submerged in the concept and practice of ownership. From here, soaking wet, we have to imagine a possible world where there is no practice, not even a concept, of ownership.

I can’t do it. Tried. Too wet.

John Locke defined personal property as one’s own body first as a counter to the concept that our bodies are subjects of the king. He said all have a right to property, that property being their personal selves/bodies and the fruits of their own labors. This was a counter to slavery - no one can own another person.

I agree I not only have a right, but an unavoidable relationship to my own body. And to say this sentence I said my “own” body.

To skip to the end, in order to imagine a world where there is no concept of ownership, I’d have to imagine a world where there is no concept my own, or no concept of me.

Can’t bring myself to see myself as not myself. Similarly, saying all things are pooled and shared doesn’t eliminate ownership, property, and personal property.

Got it.

So if everything is pooled and shared, how is that an example of no one owns anything? What happens to things after they are pooled and shared? Aren’t they then still owned, now personally, after the sharing?

No one owns anything. Everything that's produced is pooled and shared. — frank

Isn’t the idea of communal ownership a counter to individual ownership? It’s not a counter to ownership.

If everything is pooled and shared, ownership is claimed by the poolers so they can share those things with everyone.

In other words, the debate between communism and capitalism isn’t a debate about ownership, it’s a debate about who are the owners. People still claim ownership over the resources and fruits of labors, they just either claim it as an individual or by committee.

I don’t see how personal property can possibly be avoided. If I pick ten apples and bring them to the pool of ten people, and we communally share them, each of us get one apple each. Now that the pooling and equal sharing is done, each person has one apple. Must not that one apple now belong to each person as their personal property? Who else but the individual is now accountable for whatever happens to that apple? It’s theirs now. No one else’s.

Over time, pooling everything and distributing everything equally, you will get people who conserve and people who don’t. So you would have to pool everything everyday all anew to keep the community equal. Or never give anyone anything that they can take out of the rest of the community’s sight, where they could conserve it, amass it, etc.

Just as long as you don’t hope to see it, because hope is more of a religious thing. But yes, any day now. Nuclear holocaust, rogue AI, weaponized virus. Trump. Biden. Putin. Lot’s of possibilities.

religion to be eradicated — Vera Mont

As soon as humans are eradicated.

What difference does it make whether something you might choose to call God exists in a non-empirical dimension? — Vera Mont

None. We are bodies. If God had no relation to the empirical world, God would have no use for us, and we would have no use for God and no reason to seek God or evidence or any content to refer to in any discussions using the term “god”.

In fact, I support free everything — Truth Seeker

Surely, sharing would work everywhere? — Truth Seeker

Let's ban money and let's ban private ownership. — Truth Seeker

This is a contradiction. If no one privately owns anything, no one is in a position to share anything.

If we make everything free, we need to take everything away from everyone first.

Once we share everything and ban private ownership, there will be no more sharing ever again. The idea of sharing would just become redistribution of equity - which is not sharing, just administration.

Gate-keeping rebuttals to disagreement.

I think a big part of it is that Wittgenstein gutted metaphysics (the gutting starting with Hume, and Kant, then Nietzsche and Wittgenstein). So if you display disagreement with Wittgenstein, you are thought to be some kind of primitive thinking essentialist, metaphysician, who is totally missing Wittgenstein’s point. And therefore you should go read or read again

But someone pointed out this sort of gate-keeping happens with Nietzsche too.

Which I agree.

We all need to show our Wittgenstein or Nietzsche bona fides these days, certainly before any proponent of either of them would entertain a disagreement with them.

Ironically (and why he admitted the nonsense) what I see happens when people gatekeep arguments against Wittgenstein or Nietzsche, in a raw simplified sense, they turn Wittgenstein’s or Nietzsche’s position into a sort of gospel truth - where the meaning objectively is - which is the opposite of what either was purporting to demonstrate. (They forget to throw away the ladder when they point to the words, which points to maybe a reason the words need more investigation.)

Do they mean to say that God had decided I would recover slowly but, because THEY are asking, God will speed up my recovery? Do they think they are that important? Isn’t that egotism? — Art48

Personally, I do think God thinks each one of us is that important. I think he died for me, and my sins (not even something good I did). And for each one of us. He showed us how important we are to him. That's the God I pray to. And egotism would just get in the way of that relationship. I better approach the person who died on a cross for me, who invented space-time before that, with some non-egotistical humility, and thankfulness, and praise for greatness, if I would think he would do me any more favors, such as "give us this day our daily bread" or "speedy recovery".

You are right. I guess I was eluding to my debate tactic, that Wittgenstein himself provided for us: even Wittgenstein understood arguing Wittgenstein was nonsense. So no kidding no one understands Wittgenstein, neither did he.

“My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical when he has used them — as steps — to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.”
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.54

That sounds deep, and there is wisdom in it - words really do get in the way of what they are trying to do, sometimes - but I sum up Wittgenstein as saying "Let me explain to you how there is no such thing as an explanation."

Indeterminacy and thrownness, what do these mean? Indeterminateness refers to the lack of settled position — Constance

It’s where things resist even identity, ever undetermined, questioning “thing” itself. I get indeterminacy, and agree, it can be called “lack of settled position” or just the flux and frictions of being, in our case, human (whatever “human” means…. Always an important recognition of the predicament that is being human.

Already we have left the comfort zone of ready to hand assumptions, for how many of us entertain such ideas? This can be argued: is a concept a principle of synthetic inclusiveness? Is it a pragmatic way to achieve an end? Perhaps a concept is the very way finitude is defined and delimited. But is it historically structured? Is it possible for thought and its concepts to understand the world as the world? Or, my favorite: how can a concept be understood given that the understanding itself is inherently conceptual? The worst kind of question begging. — Constance

I know what you are saying, but it feels too metaphysical too fast, or epistemological, asking “Is it possible for thought and its concepts to understand the world as the world?”. We no longer need the content, such as the “the essence of religion”, to continue the conversation this inquiry might become.

All the color is set aside to behold the coloring itself.

As where you first said this inquiry suspends all concepts of “faith, atheism, theodicy, God, first cause, teleology, and so on;”

But it feels like we could easily head into a digression away from statements like “the world IS religious.”. Perfectly good questions but, we now need never talk about religion.

But then again, I think there is a reason a discussion of the indeterminacy of existence for us, bumps into epistemological as well as ethical, radical indeterminacy.

To me, as metaphor, we looked through a window you called “the essence of religion” for something prior that is “real” and “in the world”. What did we find? You said “radical ethical indeterminacy that is our existence.”

If it was ever possible that “we have left the comfort zone of ready to hand assumptions” to see the prior, perhaps we can keep what you found here, and keep looking.

The same indeterminacy of our existence could also be said to have given birth to science. (I see this is why Nietzsche could say academic science could lie as much as religion could).

Science and religion are equally concept making, indeterminacy regulators. It’s why they always wrestle for the same space with the “why” the how, the what, the whether.

It’s just indeterminate. Our existence.

We fill this indeteminacy with laws.l. They could be rational, scientific laws. Be it ethical or not, or only ethical, or scientific or not, or only scientific, it’s all still mixed with the indeterminate.

I can’t argue what I see in where this is going, but I can describe it.

What I see is that, somehow (and I leave that to epistemology to figure out), and for some reason (and I’ll leave that to the poets and prophets), what I see is, like you said “existence IS us.” We are each, the world. But this also means something. What it means, adds to this world, moves it”self” (the existence IS me), ahead of the world, in to the world, like being thrown. We throw our”selves” into this world.

We participate in our own thrownness. We interrupt ourselves into “our” existence.

I don’t know how, mind you. (I just said “mind you” twice to serve two difference functions, having two different meanings in the sentences - so indeterminate of me.)

But only then, after by some means being thrown to throw our selves back might we start to look for what this becomes, such as a vision of indeterminacy, be it radical ethical, or rational, or ethical first, or rational with ethical color first…etc.

So I’ve lost your point again about religion qua religion. Something making use of the word “essence” about “religion.”

Or does the overlap between scientific objectification (the rational, yielding speech itself). like ethical objectification (yielding religion) show I’m at least standing in the same vicinity as you?

So you just think God is not fully or always accurately reflected in the Bible. Well I just say good for you! You have God too! You see the hugeness of it all and give it all back to God too.

Why do we need to see which God is bigger though? Doesn’t God, to you, mean the one that by definition must be the biggest, must touch all things, must incorporate the “All”?

Means the same thing to me. I see him speaking directly to tiny grain of sand me, in the Bible, not because of the wisdom in it, but because He wants me to see it. You don’t. You see God elsewhere. Show me what you see, not how what I see is wrong, because I see a God that belittles everything, including all of our philosophies and thoughts about what we think we know about God. A God for whom all the grains of sand and all the stars add up to a rain drop in his ocean.

For sake of inquiry,

we suspend the standard conversational themes generally presented here, themes that center on concepts like faith, atheism, theodicy, God, first cause, teleology, and so on; and certainly authoritative texts like the bible or the koran, and the personality cults these inspire. I mean, we put out of inquiry all, or nearly all, that circulates though typical religious mentalities, in an effort to determine if there is something "real" that religion is truly about; something that is not simply a historical fiction conceived in an ancient mind. To do this, one has to ask basic questions about the world, forgetting even the word 'religion' — Constance

Look for “something real”, that later gives rise to the words "religion" or "God", but not yet. Great metaphysical question for this forum.

I hold that religion actually has a foundation discoverable in the essential conditions of our existence. Something PRIOR... — Constance

"discoverable" "foundation" "essential" "prior" - these are all objective references, almost empirical. Good for metaphysical inquiry.

Religion rises out of the radical ethical indeterminacy of our existence. — Constance

The "indeterminacy of our existence." That which is prior, that which is the condition of our existence, involves indeterminacy, and to us, as a condition of human existence in particular, a condition of "our" existence, we find ourselves thrown into an ethical indeterminacy. And this begets religion.

Am I in the ballpark?

I would break it down like this: "religion arises out of our sense of the indeterminate. It does so in three steps: We sense the indeterminacy of things. We sense ourselves, like the other things, are indeterminate as well. And we sense an ethical indeterminacy when those other things are humans like ourselves."

But I now changed it to "a sense of" the indeterminate. I use "a sense of" the way you use "our". It is the human part that particularizes "existence" into "our existence." Human sentience applied to the thrownness of objects, creates a particular sense of things. We sense in a particular way. We sense "our" meaning ourselves, in existence. Our mere presence in the universe is the presence of a particular sense of things, and this is tied up with the prior reasons we use the word "our" when discussing existence.

So along with indeterminacy, comes the "our", or the sense of indeterminacy, or the discovery of indeterminacy, which only arises in ourselves, as humans.

Our mere human presence in the universe, brings with it a sense of the indeterminacy. The indeterminacy of things, for us, must therefore include the indeterminacy of what we ourselves are. This, to me, now makes a radical indeterminacy.

And all of these beget religion. I like it.

I obviously love the word "thrown" you use later, and the seeking something "prior". Every good metaphysic must incorporate thrownness.

I do not see the thrownness itself as something determinate or indeterminate. You might bias it towards the indeterminate, but the thrownness itself doesn't create the indeterminacy. The determinate and the indeterminate jostle for position in the thrownness, but the thrownness is just there, it's the prior, the condition of existence itself.

The indeterminacy, is ourselves thrown in the mix - we are the introduction of indeterminacy in this mix.

So something human starts to look prior to the indeterminate. This creates circular reasoning. We use "our" existence to discern "radical ethical" of the "indeterminate." But if it is "our", it might automatically include the "ethical" - and existence itself might beget the indeterminate from "our" presence in existence. So I still have to wonder what was prior, what is the condition of existence at all that begat the "our" - the self-reflection in the thrownness that found radical ethical indeterminacy.

For now, we are already thrown, among the given, subject to the prior condition, and where the human and so many humans are thrown in such condition, at least, there is ethical indeterminacy.

To do this, one has to ask basic questions about the world — Constance

I want to keep the sense of indeterminacy as one facet of our existence that begets religion, but see other ingredients to the bread of religion (pun intended).

I would add that religion arises not only out of our sense of indeterminacy, but also our sense of impossibility. We have to sense it, as a real object, like the indeterminacy. But it is a sense not of the indeterminate, but the determined impossibility.

We've all experienced something that cannot be, yet it is. It's anything we can't explain, such that every explanation we construct may be impossible. Those moments of paradox, where you can say "I don't believe it!" while staring at it. That real sense of the impossible, gives rise to religion.

Both the indeterminate, and the impossible, can be called the mysterious. They both give birth to "why" and "how" and "what" and "whether real".

Both of them make a predicament out of action. Ethical indeterminacy undoes any sound ethical judgment of how to act. Impossibility undoes any commitment to taking action as well.

Impossibility deserves more consideration, along with indeterminacy, and ourselves in it.

Another prior condition may be our sense of time. Seems too simple, but somehow, we sense the eternity of time itself. Now we have a sense of time that is opposite of time, something always present instead. This is an impossibility contained within time. This makes the beginning and end of time indeterminate. The present, as eternity. We may find every eternal thing impossible in all of this changing motion and thrownness, but we sense it as part of the mystery.

The eternal and the impossible equally give rise to science. We ask how about the impossible, to understand it and show how it is possible, how it fits with the eternal laws that allowed it to be possible in the first place.

There is much that needs to reworked here and developed, but I was being too ambitious for a Tuesday night. Maybe you can make more of this.

Indeterminacy, impossibility, and time as eternity - human senses of what is thrown before ourselves taken as a community (therefore ethical indeterminacy) - giving rise to religion.

I think another missing element is language itself. Without it, we have no way to distinguish the indeterminate for the other ethical relata (other humans). It's all too indeterminate without the anchor of language to make the community. Language itself becomes a prior condition of shared indeterminacy. Language is part of the thrownness.

So indeterminacy, impossibility, maybe time as eternally present despite change itself, and the language that captures these things among the various communal selves as in "our existence" - all beget religion.

From the radical ethical indeterminacy, we get the ten commandments and the laws.
From the impossibility, we get walking on water and rising from the ashes
From eternity we get Omni-presence.
From language we get the word of God, prophesy and a way to mediate all of this.

Good post. Hope I gave you some things to think about, because you did to me.

I’ll assume I am not understanding you and start over.

You are claiming to show that:

(5) There are prayer-induced experiences of observations that correspond to Bible-specific propositions, therefore they are evidence Christianity is true — Hallucinogen

I see 4 distinct things where I may be misunderstanding your usage. Can you clarify, maybe with some examples or rephrasings, what you mean by:

“Prayer induced experiences” - what is that to you?
That’s really two things - “prayer” (which I think we all understand) and “induced experiences”.

“Observations”. Maybe the above is attached to what I see as the second variable being “of observations”. I’d like to see how you distinguish “prayer induced experiences” from “experiences of observations”.

“Bible-specific propositions” - probably just need an example, one that cashes out with the other terms using an example would help. “Jesus brought sight to a man who was blind from birth” so “God can work miracles” might be an example.

“Christianity is true”. Do you mean objectively, verifiably true, like the earth revolves around the sun type truth?

I think I need to see an example that shows how a person’s prayers are answered so to speak in a way that verifies a connection between the prayer and the observable experiences of that person, with the Biblical proposition thereby showing objective truth of Christianity beyond that person.

I’m like Thomas. I need to put my hands in the wounds. But you aren’t asking me to trust you that Christianity is true, or even to trust God. You are asking me to follow your logic, and so Thomas in this case is asking for the right experience before agreeing to the conclusion.

They don't get the option of "working with it". — Vera Mont

The other antelopes do.
The lions do.
The vultures do.
The bacteria do.
The grass does.

Someone giving a specific account of a prayer leading to proof of a Christian proposition in themselves, that is evidence of faith at work.
— Fire Ologist
I'm not sure what you mean, do you mean to contradict the argument? — Hallucinogen

Yes, because a logical argument has to show something multiple third parties can use to see the same thing, to see whatever is the conclusion of the argument. All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is a dead man someday. That is something a third party can demonstrate to fourth parties and so one getting the same result due to it being a sound, scientific/logical demonstration of a proof.

I’m saying to the third party scientists running tests on believers and taking as objects things like Christian propositions, and prayer-induced experiences, all the scientists are left with (if they believe in the honesty of the test subject) is someone who is demonstrating faith. They don’t see the reason that test subject sees a reason to connect the Christian proposition to the prayer. You don’t see the reasons as a third party, you just see their reasons (that the scientific observer didn’t directly access), and would be better to call this evidence of what faith is, namely, someone in the act of believing something) rather than any proof about Truth of the thing they believe (how the christian proposition relates to their own prayer.)

The believer trusts God. That can only look reasonable to someone else who trusts God.

I know you’re merely clarifying a finer distinction with Vera, and who the atheists and the believer(s) are here, and maybe I’m misreading things, but using pain to show how God was dumb or evil or non-existent, leaves us right back in a position to asses the role of pain in the mix, and I agree with your assessment.

It's coherently and consistently dismissive of the idea of intelligent design by a benevolent deity. — Vera Mont

Pain sucks. But if we want to live at all, we’re going to have to work with it. I didn’t say like it, I said work with it.

(5) There are prayer-induced experiences of observations that correspond to Bible-specific propositions, therefore they are evidence Christianity is true. — Hallucinogen

I like the attempt, and I’m a believer in God, but this argument basically means “because I experienced God, I know God is true.” That argument only works for that one person.

That person certainly has a reasonable, logical, syllogistic basis to demonstrate the truth of Christianity (if I follow you at all), but for anyone else, aside from trusting the witness, there is no testable evidence for the truth of God there.

So it’s a good argument that the one who is praying can make to themselves, but without firsthand experience of this prayer induced evidence, the praying one is asking the other scientist/logicians to take his word on it.

Someone giving a specific account of a prayer leading to proof of a Christian proposition in themselves, that is evidence of faith at work. This faith can be inferred by others. We know what faith looks like now. But the link between Christianity and prayer-induced experiences is as invisible to the scientist as cause and effect are invisible to David Hume.

Unfortunately, to adequately grow muscle, muscle fibres must be destroyed and that hurts. This has a dual nature. In injury, we need to know this is happening to address it adequately. While I hear your gripe, I just don't see what it has to do with the potential 'nature' of a God. It does it's job well. — AmadeusD

I agree with that. I wouldn’t say unfortunately. It’s more like, unfortunately, we humans ruminate about and dramatize every little spark of the nervous system.

Poor old pain, such an easy target for derision.

But pain pushes things one way, and pleasure another way, and without each you don’t get each direction. Some things fall into the fire and they sit there and get hot, others sit there and burn, others flinch and withdraw (like the hand of a functioning ape), and others explode forcing many other things to move in many directions (maybe blowing the fire out too).

Metaphysically put, change is a bundle of creation and destruction.

Bio/anthropo/psycho-logically put, pain is an organism’s way of regulating the destruction part to allow for the creative part.

Pain need not have anything to do with God, and need not be seen as better or worse than any other state - pain is change measured by the one undergoing the change.

Very simply, thank God or the universe or random functioning for pain. It’s how organisms feel their way across the desert, to find the shade, which might feel hot absent the trip across the desert first.

No reason to think pain or destruction could be banished from a physical universe and still build a universe anything like it is.

The destruction/creation dance is also discussed by Nietzsche, Aristotle, Epicurus, Darwin, Freud, and in the Bible, each in their own ways, each for a different reason or having a different effect upon the reader. Choose your poison, should it change you, something will be lost, and it might even hurt to live through.

Do you believe in God? You seem to say Genesis is a lie about God, and you capitalize God. We can’t talk about what God means in the Bible if you don’t believe there is a God. Do you believe there is a God?

Or are you just trying convert me to atheism?

Again, I’ll give my best answer (instead of pointing you to a dictionary), and hope these are your honest questions.

The flood is life in the universe. We all die, drowned by the next day, or the next. We’re experiencing the flood right now. The Ark is open to all who seek hope in God.

No human being should be cursing any fellow human being. Cursing is using words and rituals to wish and invoke physical harm, spiritual harm, misfortune and death - it’s a cowardly way of attempting to torture and murder someone. Cursing is evil for selfish evil’s sake. The one who curses fully believes in some God, and then seeks that God’s power, to do evil for their own self-serving reasons. Cursing asks God to do evil for you. Now direct such a curse at one’s own parents, who gave that person life in the first place. It’s not an evil command to stop some one who curses others, let alone curses their own family, let alone their parents. Today we can stop them without killing, and today, so few believe in curses anyway. But if you believed in the power of cursing, directed it at your parents, in a small village circa 2000 plus BC, it could destroy many lives, many families, many generations, dissolving the whole village - like spiritual flood.

Call it Karma if it makes you feel better, but cursing leading to a death sentence need not be such a clear “evil command”, unless you don’t believe in God or curses anyway. Then it’s killing some kid for nothing. But then, the kid isn’t cursing either - just spinning yarns about some fairy tale.

Someone tells you “that’s a poison apple - anyone who eats it will die in minutes.” And you think “I hate my mom, so I’m going to feed her this apple.” And you give it her and watch her eat it. Turns out it was just an apple - but what have you done? Is there any punishment that might be due?

Therefore question silly. — Vera Mont

Therefore question should not be asked, or else “silly” is meaningless.

I can't be impressed by a self-serving fiction. — Vera Mont

That undercuts everything you just said about valuing. Is it self-serving or object relational? Is valuing real or not??

Apes, orca, and ants show intelligence and social cohesion and communication, various species use tools, care for their young, and so on. — unenlightened

a hierarchy of values is in place — Vera Mont

I think we are skirting the question of “what is a ‘value’?”or “what does ‘valuing’ mean?” or “how does ‘valuing’ happen or function?”

We are providing examples of what we each think valuing is, without really saying it.

Because it is hard to say, so I don’t blame us.

But I think it is making each of us hard to follow for the others.

I agree that valuing is a type of relating - so I would need to posit two separate objects in relation to one another to find a valuing of something. That was said by Unenlightened.

And I agree that there is a type of hierarchy or prioritization going on when valuing. Hierarchy was just inserted by Vera Mont.

But I disagree that the relationship between yeast and sugar has anything to do with valuing. Same with organisms valuing breathing - that is not valuing. Those relationships are more like the rock that falls downhill.

I agree that valuing occurs in organisms, but see it only among humans.

Valuing has to to with considering options (so prior to action upon separate objects, one must reflect upon either this or that), concluding a hierarchy or prioritization among the options, and then choosing one over the other as valued.

I still haven’t defined “valuing” but am trying to set out some of the moving parts as I see them.

So maybe, if this act of valuing hides in the verbal which hides in the functioning brain, and is an illusion we have invented to deal with a brain that is “self” aware, if this means that there is no real ontological weight to an act of valuing outside these constructions, that is a separate question. Valuing still only happens when a mind considers separate objects and choses one over the other. It involves separate objects related in a prioritized way by choice.

The yeast doesn’t appear to consider or choose, it just reacts to sugar, like a rock thrown in the air reacts to gravity.

And every act is not an act of valuing. People do things without thinking, without the consideration of identified options. Or they consider the options but make no choice as when they follow others like sheep and make no choice (or maybe choose to value the one they follow like sheep).

I happen to see only people display this behavior of valuing. I can only see it when they speak. Without words, I can have no idea whether some other two objects that seem to relate to one another are relating through a valuation or not. This seems to me only visible in a mind and only visible in some demonstration of another mind, as in speech.

Apes may be getting there, but who knows. We can only infer some sort of valuation process and not a complex reaction to complex stimuli.

So given all of the above, I see reasons to value humans as the lone evaluators in experience.

Maybe, again, you don’t value evaluation, you are not impressed by the purely human. I am amazed by it, and once in a while, actually learn something new through words alone. The human is of unique value in the universe.

P.S. - bringing in hierarchy or prioritization, means I am now skirting over the use of “good” which would measure the priority. More hard to define concepts tied up in the hard to define concept of “value”.

So if everything in the Bible was made consistent and syllogistic for you, would you still call it a fairy tale?

And you set the contradiction up with a bias. “The evil command to kill a child..”

What is a “curse” as you mean it as used in the Old Testament?

Good or bad is just how we write. — ENOAH

it's in the living — ENOAH

But isn’t making “good or bad” in the living for us? Isn’t “good” for humans like birds chirping for birds?

Why place “good or bad”, that we make, on some less real level than any other being, like birds make?

You don’t think the “good” or the “bad” we construct is then constructed, being whatever it is? Just because something is constructed only for humans and only by humans doesn’t require that it not be real, not be, not be thereby constructed. Humans are being humans too.

they are breathing as they claim not to value breathing — unenlightened

So by breathing, they have already shown they value breathing.

Or more simply put, by acting, we display our values, like the yeast acting upon sugar.

You or they may make the claim — unenlightened

So words are just a claim. Like a lie is a claim, or a hypothesis, or a fairy tale is another claim.

In order to make it an exclusively human affair, you would have to define it as an entirely cerebral and verbal affair, whereas it is commonly experienced as visceral — unenlightened

You are talking about two things at once. Which is fine with me.

You talk of the “human affair” as “entirely cerebral and verbal”. That’s one thing, where you place the “valuing” act I presume.

Then you talk about “whereas it is vicseral” where “it is experienced.” That’s a second thing.

You need both to say anything about one of them. And what did you say about them both?

yeast values sugar; dung beetles value dung; birds value worms; I value a morning coffee. But a rock values nothing, it is all the same to if it crumbles or melts or falls in the sea or falls into the sun. — unenlightened

You also said value is relational. Which I totally agree with. In order to have a relation, we need relata, or separated things that have a relationship. So I agree that you are talking about at least two things in every example.

But then you also said:

One might suggest that an individual life has infinite value to itself, as the source of all its values. So far so good, but what makes humans so special? I'll leave it there for now. — unenlightened

So you are saying one might “suggest” a person has great value (call it “infinite” and so forth to exaggerate and put a finer point in it), but only that this is of “value to itself”, as itself is the source of all its own values.

But starting this gently with “one might suggest” you go out, seeming to me, with more of leaning towards value having nothing to do with anything but oneself which is a visceral cerebellum and not more, still in the form of question you adjudge:

“

what makes humans so special? — unenlightened

And you put it italics, as if to give it special significance.

But you used yeast and sugar, you used yourself and coffee, birds and worms, to show examples of “valuing.” You said yeast, as it relates to sugar, is in the act of valuing sugar. You made value the verb. You said exactly “”yeast values sugar”. The act of valuing relates (another verb) the yeast to the sugar. That is what your words seem to mean.

And you said there are two objects again where you separate the “exclusively human affair” from the “experienced as visceral.”

But conclude the human is nothing special?

What happened to the sugar?

You placed both the yeast and the sugar on the side of the “human affair” where you emptied the visceral experience into the “verbal” which I take to mean humans using their cerebral functions.

With the “self” creating its own values with words like “self” as in “I value coffee”, values need not relate to anything else but the self, which is like the rock which values nothing.

You’ve lost the relation in an act of valuing.

Lastly, I’ll ask, if there are things like a rock which cannot value anything as they are pummeled to dust, but we humans can make values and relate things to our own actions, might we be not so much special, but simply unique in having these conversations in the universe, like an orchid is unique, and each species of yeast is unique?

I believe the purpose of hell, Gehenna, is purification. ... I don't believe in eternal hell. — BitconnectCarlos

Not to quibble on the details, I basically agree with you.

I think most of us won't be going right to any paradise or heaven. We wouldn't understand how to live there. We need a purification.

And I don't believe there are many in hell. Why would God go to all of the trouble that is saving any one of us, dying on a cross even, to leave any one in hell who simply cried for "God!" and meant it?

But I do believe there are those who are in hell for eternity. At least there may be. They must freely, and truly, see God's hand, slap it away, and run into hell. Such is the great power we've been given - we can earn hell; we can reject love from not just anyone, but love from God. Only such power makes us lovable, only in freedom can such power do good, and only by knowingly rejecting the good, can we seek out hell.

I don't know whether an internal apology truly covers everything. Murder a few hundred, apologize afterwards -- "we're in the clear!" The murderer won't see the true scope of what he did. — BitconnectCarlos

It's good to know there's a sacrament of Penance, an act, taking effort, to openly confess out loud, in front of another person, a priest, to whom you can show your understanding of your sin, and show you understand you need forgiveness now, and seek that forgiveness knowing that you do not have it yet while you seek it.

But ultimately, the internal confession is all that really matters, even during a sacrament. Internally, is where God sees the sin and grants the forgiveness, and internally is where the sin is committed and forgiveness received.

a fairy tale...with some things the Catholic Church says...... — Art48

If we are talking fairy tales, we can say anything we want, so any attempt at a conversation about something real is moot.

Can you justify that, too? — Art48

But I'll take that as an honest question anyway, for sake of conversation.

Wasn't Jesus in your quote asking them to think again what the law is and who is breaking it? He wasn't telling them why they were wrong. He was asking them why they were happy to enforce the law against some for eating with dirty hands, while they were not enforcing the law against others who cursed their fathers and mothers. This quote doesn't talk about Jesus' relationship to the law, or what the law is, or how or when it should be enforced, or what the result of enforcement is.

He wasn't saying we should be lining people up for execution for cursing their dads and not waste time lining people up for execution for not washing their hands. He was saying the Pharisees were picking the wrong people to enforce the law against.

But back from the fairy tale as you call it, the authority to kill is in all of our hands. I mean, we see people authorizing, and, with their own hands, killing, everyday. If God is just a fairly tale, the authority to kill, or place someone in hell, already always is in our hands. This quote says, "you are not using your authority wisely."

One can also forgive despite authority to kill.

Do you really want to keep talking about all of the laws and commandments, and the complexity of understanding them, and the complexities of enforcing them, from a fairy tale?

“Yeast values sugar”.

I disagree. An act of valuing, is an act only a person can do. That’s not what valuing means.

And any suicide doesn’t value breathing at all.

what makes humans so special — unenlightened

We can value anything, and everything, or nothing.

This conversation is nowhere else in the universe but in our minds here together.

Doesn’t mean we are better or higher - but certainly special.

Welcome to the forum.

Any honest question is not a stupid one. No reason to ever feel shame for asking a question, or else we should all feel shame. And if it takes bravery to be mocked for asking an honest question others call stupid, then you are just asking the wrong people, so thanks for being brave and giving us all the opportunity to show respect and value in your questions.

What is the value of a single human life? A great question and one everyone should consider more often.

If I set out to rank the value of all human lives, I should start by ranking myself least and go from there. That’s because, if I set out to value a single person, I conclude that every human life is a universe of value.

When it comes to judging the value of other people, I don’t think it is really possible - the universe behind human eyes is too vast.

And anyone who wants to sum up other people as stupid, or low, or of less value, doesn’t even know who they are themselves.

I was taught in Catholic school that an unforgiven, unrepented mortal sin at the time of death results in hell. Do you believe that? I was also taught that intentionally missing Sunday Mass without a good reason was a mortal sin. Suppose one Sunday you skipped Mass merely because you didn’t feel like going. Do you believe that if you died unexpectedly later that day that you’d go to hell forever? — Art48

"Unrepented mortal sin leads to hell" - Catholic tradition. — BitconnectCarlos

Unrepented - that is the key. Do we really need to blame God for hell?

You do something you know is wrong (regardless of whatever rule you think exists, be it go to Mass on Sunday, or eat meat on Friday, whatever), you yourself know it is wrong, and that it will hurt others, hurt God himself maybe, and you don't care, and you do it anyway, for spite, just because you want to. That's the mortal sin part. You have to knowingly do evil for evil's sake. Then, having consciously and proudly committed this sin, maybe those harmed ask for help because of their harm, or those wronged simply ask for some small notion of "I'm sorry", but no, the mortal sinner at that moment still could care less about the harm caused and still being caused, he still thinks the act that he himself said to himself was "wrong" and did it anyway, he says "I will not repent. I love my sins first and foremost."

Sounds like a hell of life to me. Sounds like Gaza right now, like Gaza when Jesus walked it. Like earth since humans have been in charge.

Are there sins we can commit that demand punishment? Satan is probably still bragging about his wonderful sins. "I tricked them into killing Jesus on a cross." Like we needed any help anyway - some of us today still want all of that credit.

But it's the unrepentance that is the key - all you have to do is say "whoops, sorry" and God will throw a banquet for you and sit you at his table in paradise.

So this frightening scenario of a mortal sin checklist is for children who need to learn to decide for themselves whether to go to church or not. I'm not saying there are not sins that land us in hell; I'm saying be an adult and that's nothing to fear at all. Once you are an adult, God is going to see your heart and see if you sinned mortally for sake of evil itself, or if you just made a mistake, and what's more, if you say "sorry" he will forgive you immediately even a "mortal" sin.

I know there is more to it all, and the church enforces the rules too, but it's better to understand Jesus whose rules were to love and to forgive others, and to serve. Break those commandments and rules before you fear Jesus.

Short answer to your question, yes, if you die with an unrepented mortal sin, you go to hell as you lived in hell. But that requires the sinner (who, remember, called something a sin, agreed it was a sin, and did it anyway, for spite, to harm, because the sin was what he wanted) - hell requires the sinner to say "I am not sorry."

You can't mortally sin if you don't agree your action is a sin. You have to know it is wrong and do it anyway. So many of us avoid mortal sin because we are ignorant, or we are 7 years old.

God didn't live as a poor beggar to be tortured and die on cross for us, only to later tell us "Well, it says on the checklist that you skipped church a few times, and you didn't honor your father as much as your mother, and you never asked for forgiveness, so, take the elevator to the basement - that's the rules. It's too late for you according to this checklist I have here; I loved you to the point of sacrificing my life on a cross, but the book says hell, so, looks like we are both sorry now."

I know all of that sounds like something a priest might say - but priests are sometimes just actually people, as ignorant as anyone else.

That doesn't sound anything like anything Jesus ever said. A grave sin that cannot be forgiven, I know it exists, but I hope I don't ever want such a thing.

To hell with all of the rules: simple solution to hell - forgive others who sin against you. Be a forgiver. God will throw away all of the rules for one who is merciful. Like Jesus was.

I define a regressive person as someone who is uneducated, superstitious, gullible, fearful, and angry. — Art48

I have a degree in Philosoophy and a post grad degree as well, I’m not the least bit superstitious (way more interested in a scientific explanation for any phenomena than some deus ex machina storytelling), not gullible at all as any 55 year adult on this planet should not be anymore. I’m really not as afraid as I probably should be, and I’m definitely too angry, but I know it, and can control it if you’d like.

And I go to Mass every Sunday.

Do I have to explain how your definition of regressive and your linking it to the essence of religion is really nothing more than an insult to religious people?

You have to really know religion, really study a life lived by one who knows and loves god, to build a convincing reduction of religion to ignorant fear, etc. Your sketches of the breadth and depth of religion seem narrow, shallow, and frankly old and tired.

But I am not going to judge some measure of your brain matter that led you to ask if religion promotes backwardness. I’m sure it’s an honest question (if I’m not being too gullible).

Religion, like anything else, must occupy my mind, my body, my desire, my whole human being. Like going to the movies. We all have to choose our content.

For no less than an hour a week, I watch and listen at church. At the movies, I get popcorn and hopefully something to think about, something awesome to see, something beautiful, something terrifying, and maybe something inspirational. I get all of these every week at church (well, bread and wine instead of popcorn).

I know why you look down so low on religion. That’s easy enough to see - all the stupid people who say “Jesus”. But you have to go way further back than the Romans or the Old Testament to find the really stupid, uneducated, fight or flight folks. The ancient Egyptians or Chinese or Sumerians - the slaves of Marcus Aurelius - they are your cousins and uncles and moms and dads, just a generation away, really like yesterday, or when you yourself were 14, no matter what university degree we’ve “advanced” and progressed to. We’re no different, no better. Haven’t come very far at all.

Nothing’s progressed to any degree worth bragging about, or worthy of looking so far down on superstition.

Everyone is still as full of shit as always.

To show me how religion essentially holds us back, you have to show me some great advanced place far from religion where we might go.

The progressive cerebral cortex gave us eugenics, and the nuclear bomb, and so many other highly educated developments, so high above superstition. Should I tie inhumanity to progressivism? Religion gave us the university and the hospital.

Religion can be a source of hope for progress, that there might be some value in progressing at all among you people, my fellow slaves, using that cerebral cortex to maybe find wisdom in love, goodness in the experience of beauty, and these words in any mouths of “progressive man”.

The hypothetical moment when "we" divided/displaced "God's creation" our natural selves, with our constructions, choosing knowledge over life. — ENOAH

But it wasn’t just a moment. It happens everyday, by each of us. It’s a story constructed to tell me who I am now.

It wasn’t bad to put clothes on. It wasn’t the knowledge itself. It was knowledge of our own disobedience, that we knew what to do but didn’t do it. This is what we hide, this is what we cover in clothes, our wills, our selves; we hide from each other and make room for sin in the empty space between us, that we construct.

The story in the Bible shows us what is happening right now. And in that context, the context of now, the story of Jesus is unprecedented. The story is that God so regarded us, he would become one of us and being our servant unto death for us, so that even though hidden we could be in his presence again. But we killed him, we still want to hide. That’s just like us, don’t you think?

None of this can be subject to science or we again take the Picasso and see it as a good placemat for easy clean up after lunch - misses the significance of the Picasso to seek the uses and causes of something sublime.

It’s fine if you need lunch to grab a Picasso place mat, but then any old painting would do. Why look to the Bible when there are better sources of history and philosophy and science? Jesus is unlike anything ever painted. He became the painter, like us, and painted himself, for us. He allowed us to be the ones who drew the blood he painted with. So that we might live again, forgiven even for killing him, not simply eating a piece of fruit.

I told ENOAH the same thing not long ago. — Patterner

We’re all fumbling around in the same cave. With some good company.

I came away from the Gospels hating the Pharisees/Jews — BitconnectCarlos

I get it, one can read hatred of the Jews into it. Many do. Too many who call themselves Christians do.

But that’s not what I come away with at all - racial, ethnic divisions never made any sense after Jesus. The term “white Christian” drains all meaning from the term “Christian”. All of it.

God singled out and chose the Jews in human history to make clear where any human could go to seek God’s word. They can look to the words the Jewish people kept. That’s why Jesus was Jewish, why he had to be a Jew himself. He both the pinnacle of Judaism and the abolisher of all division among all peoples. His word was never for some ethnicity or race - it was for all on earth who could hear it. It just came through the Jews to simplify a starting point for the rest of us. We carry the Old and the New together now.

The Pharisees do not represent the Jews. They represent themselves, or terrible church leaders. And Jesus didn’t hate them. So we Christians shouldn’t judge them.

If the Pharisees represent anyone, they are like popes who sent men off to crusade, or priests who sexually abuse children, self adorned stewards of the word of God who used their position to sin against their fellow man. Soiling the very name of God. Jesus certainly said these things were sin, and that sin in the name of God was evil. But not once did Jesus specifically damn anyone to hell, so we can’t begin to judge who Jesus might have us hate.

But the Jews represent all of us. Me (Italian Catholic American) and you (whoever you are). The people of earth, who, even standing right there closest to God would still not see him, and killed him. We all are like the Jews in the Bible. We all killed Jesus, at least most of us. No reason to pick out a particular group and hate them. Just blind to your own position right next to “them”.

If you hate the Jews, you hate yourself. And you completely misinterpret the story. (It’s like using a Picasso or a Monet as an example of paint viscosity such that the paintings themselves become a distraction to ignore so you can talk about the components of red versus blue.)

And he was crucified most of all because of a Roman, not any Jew. That’s important for all the haters. Romans, like the soldier who asked Jesus to heal his child and Jesus did so immediately because of the Roman’s great faith, Romans killed Jesus. We are like the Romans, and the Samaritans. All of us.

But Jesus, who was not like any of us, became like all of us, a Jew, so if the Jews are to represent a particular group, it’s the particular group of all of us.

Division among men is a construction of men, like Adam hiding himself in clothes, dividing himself from God. We all do it. Divisions among us are real, but not because of Jesus, but because of what we make of him. We are the ones who divide ourselves from others. Jesus may be said to be the cause of division among us, but it is not along racial, or ethnic lines. That’s stupid.

Hating at all brings judgment on yourself - if you hate, no matter how good it feels to hate, you are already setting yourself below the person you are hating, no matter who they are. Jesus didn’t do that. Christians shouldn’t either.

I can see some sense in which it's a 'construct' but I also believe there is an innate good, although not everyone will agree. — Wayfarer

I see it as constructed, but objective or innate in that we can agree that what we each construct sometimes agrees. Agreement has good inherent in it, for example.

Couldn’t you say that the innate in conscience is where the good is gleaned, where the good is constructed? This still doesn’t say what the good is. So you may be agreeing that the good is gleaned from experience, just adding that it is the conscience that does the gleaning with its innate judgments of what is good.

This is all meant as a reply to the OP. The quotes are my sources and citations. Because they lay out enough moving parts to make the point.

what a person or in even more complex cases, a group of people, define as good can only be gleaned from experience. — Shawn

I agree.

philosophers seem to be so caught up with no clear way of defining it. — Shawn

I wholeheartedly agree. And there are whole theories of ethics and morality that ignore the good that is ever-present in the word “ethical” or “moral”, the good lurking in every moral, ethical statement. Ridiculous.

the notion of good is something inherently informed by experience, but its not something that arises from 'experience' already-formed. Notions are human, and they develop — AmadeusD

Plato found the good was an object, already formed, out there to be experienced, regardless of the human who forms the notion of good in the first place. I think Plato was pointing to what is formed once the good is developed in the human (so he was wrong to point to an eternal form). To glean the good from experience we have to grapple with the fact Amadeus raises that only our own minds can make the good, and by gleaning we are constructing the contents of our minds. That just means the good never forms without us. But I disagree if the quote from Amadeus means the good never forms. There is an object, a definition, that forms, from our experience, called “good.”

"It's all relative." — Outlander

This is the kind of statement that ignores the definition of good (from philosophers having no clear way to define it) and leaps to a scale with good, worse and better. The relative. So now, with no understanding of good, we say “good, worse better.” Then we get so enamored with our ability to move the scale, and take the same act, like killing, and mark it as good on one scale, worse by some other measure, and maybe even best measuring again. From all this mess we conclude good is relative. But it is we, the ones constructing the scale who make relativity. But further, we must first fix the good for the scale of relative goods to function at all. We still need to glean a definition of good if we are to leap into judgments of better and worse.

There are distinctions. Gleaned from experience. Constructed into knowable forms. One of these distinctions is between good and not good.

We need the good to be a fixed definition. I am sure every single one of us says “good” everyday. Every single day we make this distinction. So there is something we have gleaned, something we have constructed that we call “good” - something we should be able to define.

One person kills another person and a third says “good”. The other person was killing and attacking your family and you stopped them from killing all the rest and the third person was your mother who said “good”.
Then one person says “We must sacrifice our eldest to the gods in order to avoid the hurricane,” and they kill their own son and say “good.”

In all of these examples the notion of “good” remains fixed. It is used in the same way. If we look to compare killing the first person with killing the son we have to look to the same fixed definition of “good” to come up with our own opinions of the killings. The good, like Plato mistook for eternal without us, is more like something eternal (something we all say every single day) with us.

It is difficult to define the good because it is:

inherent in the primacy of experience — Shawn

It’s like trying to define a letter of the alphabet. We have to use letters to make words to make definitions…but by then we’ve gone so far past the single letter of the alphabet that it is easy to forget what we were meaning to define.

But nevertheless, like letters, we fix good in our lives everyday.

We can’t avoid the good we’ve constructed.

If you agree, well then we are good. If you disagree you think my opinions are not good. Right? So you must agree, good hides or screams in every sentence.

We go to the store to buy milk and can’t find it and the storekeeper says “what are you looking for” and you say “I see it now, I’m good” and the storekeeper knows everything he needs to know.

Or someone falls off a street corner and is about to get hit by a car and someone grabs them to the sidewalk and some else says “man, that was good - like a superhero..”

Or someone is leveling a table and gets the first side good, then the length leveled up, and their boss says, “is the table good?” And she says “all good.”

From all of these experiences a distinct good can be gleaned.

It’s a universally good word to know, because it is a universal feature of experience, like alphabets and characters are universally present in language and logic. Part of the mix that makes it a distinct mix.

This reply isn’t good enough. Doesn’t give you a good definition of good. It truly is difficult to say what good simply means, what it is now that we have constructed it. But there it is everyday.

And maybe the good is so basic, we don’t really need to define it. It isn’t necessary to define the alphabet before I make this post.

Maybe it would be better, if I took advice from the following:

I don't have much to say about good — Shawn

In the end, I think the good we make, that we remake in so many ways, is now distinct and will continue to make sense in every agreement, in every finished piece of work, in every night you lay down a fall asleep (did you sleep good?).

Some might even say this post would have been good if he stopped about halfway up there, but at least it’s good that it’s over now.