What you seem to be trying to do is to follow the Christian mystical train of thought without understanding what they really want/wanted to achieve. They try to empty and purify the mind from false perceptions so that nothing prevents them from experiencing God and getting to know him better, because God is beyond our language and understanding and so on, and we can not define him therefore. Why they define these things by not defining, is because wrong understanding exist. If man didnt get a wrong understanding of God because of Language, but just intuitevly understood and accepted that God is beyond our comprehension, then we wouldnt need to talk that much about God. You on the other hand USE their method of "purifying the mind" and create concepts and new categories and explanations about God by them, and thereby, the whole meaning of what these mystics were actually doing gets lost. You remember the last sentence in Wittgenstein's Tractatus I hope? ;)

"Show me proof of the fact other traditions consider God to be hidden. Do Buddhists consider God to be hidden? Well yeah, so hidden they don't even talk about him. Do Hindus consider God to be hidden? Where?"

Have you not heard of maya in hindu thought? Have you not read the Vedas and Vedanta? The upanishads? Dont you understand what maya really means? :S
Regarding buddhism: Yes and that is a profound thing. If Buddha never experienced what Isaiah experienced, why should he speculate and pretend to know about things he didnt? Why talk about someone who was so hidden that there was nothing to talk about?

"Plato's dialogues. Aristophanes was a brutish conservative of the status quo of that time largely, and therefore of course he saw Socrates as a corrupter of the youth."

Hahaha. You have read that on Wikipedia or? Your Pride is frightening. What make you think you know? Regarding Aristophanes being conservative is what People have speculated about. You clearly havent read any Aristophanes.

I know. The Eastern view on that is both preferable and more healthy but the true question is; what is true?

"It does, because N. was strawmanning. He didn't understand why Pascal was talking about the Hidden God, and instead implied that Pascal thought this was some kind of immorality from God or whatever"

I am busy so I Will answer your posts later but: You are way too stubborn and biased and before every discussion you have already made up your mind so I dont know if I really have the interest or power to ger into a discussion about this with you but; you have failed to see what Nietzsche was talking about. Pascal spoke often about how the silence of the infinite space filled him with horror(in a bad way). He doubted a lot. Remember that the copernican revolution took Place not long before? Can you imagine what the resulted in, what this meant for People back then? Of course Augustine gave Pascal some relief because he too had realized how small and yet great man were in a much more profound way than all before him, more so than Aristotle and Plato. Aquinas went back to Aristotle and didnt quite grasp this depth of Augustine, and that resulted in a theology that was built like a house. After the copernican revolution, the thomistic worldview was severely injured from inside, because the world revealed itself in its immeasurability. Nietzsche talks about how these and other things all the way through history really affects the common men in history, the poor unknowing common man, who just gets thrown into life without knowing and reflecting over why and becomes affected by the Culture and understanding of his time, to his own destruction. And then he sees how Pascal understood these things and yet didnt.

"The Eternal Silence Of These Infinite Spaces Terrifies Me" - Pascal

Your constant babble about strawmanning is BTW pathetic beyond comprehension.

What I Think is my personal problem with your view on christianity, God, man etc. is that you(and this is my problem with Aquinas too) talk about man and think about man in third person, and man sounds like an "it", created as some sort of a muppet by an incomprehemsible God. Correct me if I have been given the wrong impression though. Anyway: This way differs from Augustine for example, and also from Pascal, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky etc. Because for them, man is always and "I" and a "you". Because of your view, you give the impression to me that man isnt comprehended as anything else but a finite object created by an infinite God... As for Aquinas, he may intellectualy have understood what Augustine understood and spoke about when he asked God what be really is, what his true Nature is, and when he wondered in a dissappointed way Why man in general wonders more about the stars than about the depth of his soul. But Aquinas didnt understand this really...

Also, God isnt 100 percent incomprehensible anymore, because we have Christ, right? We know how he is because of Christ.

Btw I have written like 3 other posts directed to you... I would appreciate if you answered them

"(although yes, there are instances when murder is not wrong - or better said excusable. If you attack me with a knife for example, and I end up killing you, that is morally excusable)."

Agreed. Yet it is quite obvious that the saints would not agree entirely.

"So apparently, something - the free will of man - can displace God, so that God ceases to exist where the privation of good exists right? So His omnipresence was a joke. That's absurd."

A complete misunderstanding of what Augustine was saying.

" I know St. Augustine and the later Saints supported this view, but I think it's absolutely wrong."

I think you need to study Augustine in his understanding of this more thoroughly. There are many things I find problematic in Augustine's writings, but this is NOT one of them.

Then we agree I guess!


"It's immoral because you are subject to God's Law - and you were created in such a way as to be subject to it."

Yes correct . Though I prefer to say that it is immoral because we are made in the image of God.

"Supernal Triad, Deity above all essence, knowledge and goodness;"

I think you are confused as to what "above" actually means. He is defining what God is not, not what he is

"Yes, God is above any form of predication - exactly! Have you been reading the theologians lately? You've opened up Lossky once again, or Dionysius? That is my exact point! He is above goodness, above Justice, etc."

So morality is just morality because God randomly defined what it is, but in reality, the opposite might as well be moral? God makes up rules that we shall obey for the sake of it, but he himself doesnt value them other than as something we must obey? Or how do you mean? If I kill someone randomly, is it immoral because I do something Christ would never do, in other words something God would never do, or is it immoral because God just says so?

Hahah xD

"Well, to begin with, it tells us that Christianity (or Judaism) for that matter is likely to be speaking the truth, since we notice from experience that God is hidden."

Those two traditions are not alone in Holding this view. Your answer is in all different ways a strawman. You must say something more than that. To say "jews and christians say that God is hidden and history shows he is so they must be true" I find to be a strawman and a ridiculous argument. And it has nothing to do with what Nietzsche REALLY said in the quote.

Btw, regarding Socrates; which Socrates are you referring to when you praise him? ;) The Picture of him by Plato or that by the dramatist Aristophanes? The latter presents Socrates in his play 'The Clouds' as a petty thief, a fraud and a sophist with a specious interest in physical speculations. However, it is still possible to recognize in him the distinctive individual defined in Plato's dialogues.

I understand! No problem, I need to get some sleep Anyway now so... We can continue the discussion later! Thank you anyway!

Interesting though... This IS Perhaps a cultural problem that I have experienced, but to what extent do you mean?
The Book sounds very interesting!

Thank you Wayfarer!

But yes. I have experienced hell . The despair that I felt from feeling absolutely certain that my life was over, that I had no more Hope, that all I had to do was to wait for my everlasting torture in a Fire after death is the worst psychological torture you can experience. I am 100 percent sure of that.

I am serious. It was horrible and I guess I am glad that things didnt get worse. That is partly Why some of agustino's views have made me react. Perhaps(probably) I was deluded, but the suffering of believing that God is a capricious, unpredictable(this one is important) all-mighty, calvinistic-ish tyrant was beyond what you can imagine. That is also why I now detest the idea of etetnal hell; but more, that is Why I reacted against agustino's view that one shall delight in the fact that people are punished forever for their sins and accept that one might go to hell because God CAN'T be questioned. At least this was the impression he gave me But I probably over-reacted.

Yes

"This is actually a very dangerous thing to believe, in my opinion - because if this is so, 'God' is also above any form of predication - we can't even say that God is 'good' or 'just', because, according to this, God's ideas of 'goodness' and 'justice' could be utterly capricious; He might decided that what we think is evil, is good, just because He can."

This understanding of God is exactly what caused me to be hospitalized for a month a year ago.

There seems to be no doubt to me that the Church threatened people for wrong reasons. You also have the reasons That caused Luther to rebel...

Anyway, there are other concerns; the theological differences between East and West, where the East have been more faithful to a mystical understanding of things and to theologians like Gregory of Nyssa and Maximos the Confessor... In the Western view it is often said that in Adam we all sinned. In the Orthodox understanding however, original sin is not about an inherited guilt. It is instead about the consequences of living in a world that now is sinful. Because of that difference the Orthodox understand sin not in terms of transgression and penalty, as the catholics are more inclined to do, but rather in the terms of bondage and sickness. I believe that this is a healthier way to approach what both east and west are trying to describe. Because of that, the east's understanding of what salvation is, is transformative rather than judicial. The real object of salvation is God bringing about an inner change in us. The Atonement is about recapitulation, rather than appeasement. In the words of Ephesians 1:10, “God’s purpose is, in the fulness of the times, to sum up,” or recapitulate, “all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth…” The need for Atonement is not a need to satisfy God’s wrathful desire to punish, but rather the need for Atonement is the need to recreate in us the image of God that we had lost because of our loss of communion with Him, and to free us from our bent toward sin...

Trump threatens Kim Jong-Un... Something might happen, it is all very exciting. There is no doubt that the majority feels this way. They perhaps dont want the war, but the prattle and babble before (That actually helps leading to catastrophy) almost all want... Who doesnt want to feel important in their "opinions"? Let us not deny it. People are complicated. They dont just want to evolve, have peace etc. They also want destruction.

"The world pretends to hate men like Trump but actually loves them."

If someone here doesnt AT LEAST understand that there is some truth in this statement, I am beginning to be worried.

Here in my country, we start to Believe that America is the greatest threat and problem in the world... How can americans, who belong to the most powerful country in the world, be so stupid and unintelligent as to vote for a maniac like Trump? Let us perhaps have a discussion about whether or not democracy is something to praise? Why not instead discuss whether or not ignorant egoists should be aloud to vote?

"I don't know what you're including under atrocities, but I find many of them attributed to the Church to be overblown. A lot of anti-Catholic myths surround things like the Crusades and the Inquisition, for example.

I agree with you about the liturgy, though. The Catholic Church, in the false "spirit of Vatican II" almost succeeded in selling its birthright for a mess of pottage when it comes to the Mass. Benedict XVI has been influential in reviving the Latin form of it, though, so I hope it continues its comeback. Or at least, I hope the Ordinary Form can become more solemn and reverent."

The two worst atrocities IMO is the corruption that occured in the Church that still led to the reformation. I am not Pro Luther, but I do understand that he had a Point when he said the Church was corrupted. The other of the two worst atrocities is how it before used the threat of eternal damnation and painted up vivid and horrible pictures of what hell was (the physical torture there etc.) that caused poor uneducated people in that time to be terrorized by fear and horror over the idea that they would end up there. And why did they threat People like this? To gain and keep Control over the masses, by causing them, the fearful, sensitive and uneducated ones, to submit to The Church. All about power.

Perhaps Kierkegaard's definition of ressentiment is the most fitting here. Most feminists stand for ressentiment values. And are thus not feminists, but typical people who says "I have rights!" without caring about their responsibilities. Who knows it? According to Kierkegaard, ressentiment occurs in a "reflective, passionless age", in which the populace stifles creativity and passion in passionate individuals. Kierkegaard argues that individuals who do not conform to the masses are made scapegoats and objects of ridicule by the masses, in order to maintain status quo and to instill into the masses their own sense of superiority...

"Either you're both a misogynist and a misandrist or you're a misanthrope"

Ressentiment! Ressentiment! Stop this.

Well is the concept "sexism" an objective one to start with? Everyone seems to understand the word differently. People have strange views and react strangely sometimes. For example, I once told a woman that I love Italian Culture, and then she called me a racist... Anyway, the posters here will first have to leave the desire to accuse others if a meaningful discussion is to be achieved.

+1

And probably they want to stay in conflict until you have submitted to their understanding of things. Which I guess you will not. And probably should not. So be the greater one, apologize if someone was offended and leave the discussion. That is my suggestion.

Okay... then truth here seems unfortunately relative. If they have an open heart and want to come along rather than just pathetically causing conflicts and problems (which both you and I know people often desire to do), then they should take that apologize and forgive you. And if you then say you are NOT sexist even if your comment could appear that way to some, then they should trust you and leave it there. Now about the relativity of truth : You all misunderstand each other and will not get along. He who first leaves this discussion probably does the first Most true thing. They consider it sexist because of their reaction to what you said and because of their understanding of the world. You dont because you feel that you know that you didnt mean anything sexist and because you have a different world view. Simple as that it seems.

Agustino, admit that you wrote something that some are offended by, and you do not have to prove a point. When someone Calls you sexist, it says more about him than you if you know you are not. Just take it and leave it is my suggestion.

Judging you? When did I? I asked you what you want to achieve? Do you take that as judging someone?

some of agustino's comments can appear as sexist, especially for someone who is easily offended, yes. But how can you sit behind a screen in a place far away from his and make the judgement that he IS a sexist? Isnt that too an offence?

Whatever. I understand why agustino(whom I more often than not disagree with) wants to ignore you. Answer the questions. What is your goal, what do you want to achieve with all this?

Or so you just desire to experience the feeling of being right?

What is it that you want? Seriously. Bitter?

What People most often desire is conflict, problems and something that happpens; action and reaction. The rest is just acting.

Probably on the basis that all people want to be at the Centre of attention. I agree that agustino formulated himself and his standpoint in a bit clumsy way, but you all look at this in a too black and white way. The way people act and what they desire isnt either/or in most cases, but BOTH. Agustino can correct me if I am wrong, but I understand his posts as meaning something in that direction. And People should be aware and honest that they most often desire both while pretending to condemn one side and stand on the other.