Comments

  • Criticism of identity and lived experience
    When I was teaching I had to address this challenge on occasion. When I taught courses in Chinese and Japanese philosophy the challenge was usually limited to the authors being dead.
  • Criticism of identity and lived experience
    not disagreeing. — Jackson

    Understood.

    But just because others treat me as type 'white male' does not mean I must treat myself that way. — Jackson

    Bringing this back to your OP, the assumption addressed in the article is that we can only see things according to our 'type'. It strikes me as stereotyping in an attempt to overcome stereotyping.
  • Criticism of identity and lived experience
    But I do not experience the world as a type. — Jackson

    I agree. My brother and I may experience the same event differently.

    I think experience is mostly how I see the world, not just how I am treated as a type. — Jackson

    And yet, how I am treated will influence how I see the world.
  • Criticism of identity and lived experience
    there is a distinction to be made between things that happen and my experience of the world. — Jackson

    I would make the distinction between what is experienced, in the sense of what happens to someone, and how it is experienced, in the sense of how one responds or is affected you what happens. Both the what and the how are part of experience.
  • Criticism of identity and lived experience
    Yes, but I don't think that is what "experience" means. — Jackson

    I don't follow. How is being on the receiving end of such discrimination not an experience of discrimination?
  • Criticism of identity and lived experience
    We do not have black man and white man experiences. We have human experiences. — Harry Hindu

    That is not always the case. You are conflating an ideal with reality. The fact of the matter is that prejudice has not been eliminated. A white man in the US will not experience this discrimination when buying a house or applying for a loan or applying for a job or being stopped for a motor vehicle check.

    If the reasons are different, then what is it that is shared by the extremes to say that they are close to each other? — Harry Hindu

    The banning of books is a topical example. "Cancelling" is another. Restrictions on speech.
  • Extremism versus free speech
    A large part of the current problem is not extremism versus free speech but rather free speech extremists. Reasonable limits on speech is not a denial of free speech. (I see @Michael) posted on limits before I posted this).

    If there is to be free speech then it should not be allowed to be thwarted by being shouted out. The contemporary version of this includes one or a small number of individuals flooding a topic.

    As to Socrates: the issue was not free speech. He recognized a responsibility for what one said and he took that responsibility seriously, all the way to his death. His responsibilities were divided and in tension - both to the city and to the search for truth. Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, and others came up with ways to deal with this tension, but it has never been eliminated.
  • Criticism of identity and lived experience
    If someone dehumanizes you because of your differences, then it is the differences that we should be ignoring, not focusing on. — Harry Hindu

    It is not that the difference should be ignored but rather that such differences should not be regarded as exclusionary factors for what it means to be human.

    There must be a reason to focus on one or the other. — Harry Hindu

    It has been said that extreme views on opposite ends of the spectrum come close to each other. Rather than a straight line with two poles they are more like the Greek letter Omega:Ω. Both extremes come close together in excluding what is regarded as 'other', even though they do so for very different reasons.
  • Criticism of identity and lived experience
    When we see each other simply as fellow humans, instead of focusing on our differences of race and sex ... — Harry Hindu

    When we see each other through the lens of a well-intentioned but disingenuous ideological lens there is a danger of dehumanizing them. Our differences is what makes us individuals. Problems arise with how one regards and treats others in ways that are harmful on the basis of race or sex.

    As to the OP, I think it is misguided and all too easily drifts to the absurd. If "lived experience" or "personal experience" is the determining criteria, then all representation must be limited to autobiography.
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    Nietzsche famously proclaimed that “only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified.” — praxis

    He said an aesthetics of production is needed because people only talk about the aesthetics of reception. — Jackson

    Given his training as a philologist it seems likely than Nietzsche make the connection with the etymological meaning of aesthetic, to perceive, although no passage comes to mind in support of this. Perception is an act of will. That is, not simply what is passively given or received, but what is made, a creative act.
  • Atheism
    Certainty is a special class of knowledge in any event. — Hanover

    All too often certainty can be a special class of delusion.

    And you comment is non-responsive to mine. — Hanover

    It is. Only you don't see it because you assume the existence of the very thing in question.

    I don't know their level of certitude regarding moral issues and neither do you — Hanover

    Do you think that anti-abortion advocates doubt their own convictions?

    I do think there is wisdom to be found but do not think it matches up with what you find.
    — Fooloso4

    You have no idea what I derive from the Bible, Hamlet, or Winnie the Pooh.     — Hanover

    I do know how you define God. And I do know that there are several examples in the Bible that do not conform to your definition. So:

    Where it does you call it wisdom, where it doesn't you reject it. — Fooloso4
  • Atheism
    The problem is that epistemological uncertainty has no bearing on ontological reality. — Hanover

    Without epistemological certainty there can be no certainty of ontological reality. Moral realism remains an assertion.

    Whether we know what is right doesn't affect what is right — Hanover

    If we do not know what is right we do not know if anything is right beyond whatever it is we assert to be right.

    quote="Hanover;686309"]Why would someone advocate otherwise, as if to insist someone behave in a certain way when we ourselves aren't certain of what is the right way to behave?[/quote]

    This happens all the time. Although those who want to make abortion a criminal offense may be certain that they are right, it certainly is not certain that they are.

    This has no bearing on moral relativism or absolutism, but is just pragmatics. — Hanover

    Of course it does. Those who are convinced of their own moral certainty are now the majority of the Supreme Court and a large and powerful enough faction of the Legislator to determine what significant portions of our lives will be.

    By using a biblical analogy to make your point, do you not invoke the wisdom of the Bible? — Hanover

    The point is, what is regarded as the wisdom of the Bible does not conform to what you want it to. Where it does you call it wisdom, where it doesn't you reject it. I do think there is wisdom to be found but do not think it matches up with what you find.







    .
  • Atheism
    What I can say is that the institutional religious records written by the rabbis do not reflect stonings occurring, with that era beginning in the first century CE. — Hanover

    Right. This supports the claim of moral relativism, that even under the pretext of what is unchanging and absolute the beliefs and values of human beings are not invariant. Now you may think that this is progress, that we are moving toward the realization of moral objectivity, but I think that it is instead a matter of trying to figure out what is best in the absence of knowledge of what is best. In the absence of such knowledge perhaps what is best is to accept that certain moral problems do not yield clear solutions, that the recognition of uncertainty leads to toleration of differences.

    our wisest ancestors used it as the vehicle to describe good from evil — Hanover

    What I am suggesting is that our wise ancestors did not make such a clear distinction. The tree of knowledge is of both good and evil. One tree, so to speak, that bears fruit that is both good and evil, just as experience shows. (Koholeth) eschews the pollyannic view and squarely faces the fact that the wicked may prosper and the righteous get what the wicked deserve.

    .
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    You sound like you’re not certain what to make of Nietzsche, or at least his notion of the eternal return. — Joshs

    I would go further and say that anyone who is certain does not understand it.

    Do you think that Nietzsche introduced revolutionary ideas — Joshs

    Becoming without teleology. Perspectivism.

    This will give me a better sense of where you are approaching his work from. — Joshs

    My approach is to read him carefully, treating the text as a whole, under the assumption that it was carefully written as a whole. This means, that his style is integral. I take him to be a skeptic and ironist and so we need to put things together in order to make sense of the whole, that what he seems to be saying should not simply be taken at face value and that he can be deliberately misleading.
  • Atheism
    There is no historical evidence of the stonings taking place and extremely few death penalties being carrier out in the rabbinical era beginning in the 1st century CE. — Hanover

    Do you mean no historical evidence taking place or no historical evidence of them taking place in the rabbinical era?

    [Edit]

    Through personal experience, introspection, and a need for there to be an anchor for meaning and purpose. — Hanover

    In other words, your definition of God is subjective and based on the presupposition that there must be a meaning and purpose that is not subjective.

    I'm saying that I'm not committing to your strawmen — Hanover

    To be clear, are you claiming that the quotes from Isaiah and Job are false? And that they are false because they do not conform to your definition of God as good? A definition that "we" or "one" should accept because that is what a reasonable person should do?

    [Added: Does this mean that those of us who do not accept what a reasonable person does is not reasonable, at least to the extent they do not accept your definition of God?
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    ↪Joshs


    The problem is, at least from what you have provided, is that it does not solve the riddle of "The Vision and The Enigma". It does not respond to the question:

    Must not whatever CAN happen of all things have already happened, resulted, and gone by?

    To deny it does not give us the reason why Nietzsche denies it, if in fact he does.

    Perhaps a first step in solving the riddle is to identify it. What are we to make of this "crooked truth", this truth that is not true, that is, not straight? Zarathustra begins with a model of an eternal past and an eternal future running in opposite directions. The two roads come together in the moment but no one has yet gone to the end of them. He then asks if one could follow the road further and further would they still be antithetical. The spirit of gravity answers: all truth is crooked, time is a circle.
    If no one has “yet” followed further and further for an eternity and more then no one knows that the roads form a circle. The first problem with this is the “yet”. There can be no yet if all has occurred before, or if it can be then it is not true that whatever will happen has happened. The second problem is that if time is a circle does it only move in one direction?

    When he hears the dog howl he asks whether he had ever heard a dog howl like this and answered that he had in his youth. But when he sees the shepherd he says he had never seen this before. If it is true that everything that happens has already happened then it would be false to say that he had never seen this before. After biting the head of the snake off, the transfigured being who was no longer a shepherd and no longer a man, laughed as no man on earth had ever laughed.

    Zarathustra poses the problems this parable, this enigma: who is it that must come some day? Who is the shepherd? He does not ask about the snake. Is it the snake that bites its own tail, completing the circle? Having bit off its head is the circle broken? Is the laugh that no man has ever laughed something new? Has the one who must someday come come before or is it something that has yet to happen?

    The eternal return is a riddle. One key to reading that riddle the problem of creation. If all is eternal return then there can be no creation, but above all Zarathustra wants to create are creators.

    The greatest weight.--
    What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"
    Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?... Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?     — Gay Science Aphorism 341
  • Atheism
    There are two ways to read the Bible: (1) from a traditional view of a believer or (2) from the view of biblical scholarship. — Hanover

    These are not mutually exclusive, many but not all scholars are believers.

    Your last sentence quoted above is simply not correct and it conflates the views of #1 and #2. — Hanover

    Are you claiming that stoning was never taken literally? If it conflates your dubious distinction it does so for good reason. The rabbis who interpret the Law, both then and now, were both believers and biblical scholars.

    If you want to stand in the position of a believer, you are correct in asserting that Moses received the law from Mount Sinai ... — Hanover

    There are many believers who doubt the historical veracity of this.

    If you take the position of #2 (a modern biblical scholar) — Hanover

    You shifted from biblical scholarship to modern biblical scholarship. The inclusion of the perspective of time is significant.

    that assumes a sudden handing down of law as opposed to hundreds of years of the Bible being written, it being edited, and it being combined by an editor into a single scroll. — Hanover

    At some point it was said that certain infractions were punishable by death by stoning. Are you claiming that it was not understood literally then? At some point it was written down, are you claiming that it was not understood literally then? Eventually, however, there was no longer compliance. Such things were no longer regarded as morally acceptable. It is just this change that I am pointing to.

    What you are describing in your post is a modern fundamentalism ... — Hanover

    Again, what I am describing is changes in beliefs and values.

    As to your comment that biblical interpretations by adherents have varied through history and that fact is obvious, I agree. — Hanover

    How do you reconcile such changes with your claim that there is an objective morality?
    I never suggested the question of who God was best answered by referinng to the Bible. — Hanover

    So what would you suggest is the best way to answer the question?

    I think we could spend weeks on Job alone, considering that does present a very complicated discussion of theodicy. — Hanover

    That is certainly true. Are you suggesting that we should not take your claim that:

    At least we can define God as the good and deny unholy acts are decreed by him, but only falsely in his name. — Hanover

    seriously? Or are you saying that you are not prepared to back up your claim? When you say "we" who are you referring to?
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    I follow Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche — Joshs

    It should be kept in mind that reading Deleuze's reading of Nietzsche is reading Deleuze not Nietzsche.
  • Atheism
    You submit a strawman that certainly no significant group adheres to, which is that the Hebrew Bible is to be read literally and in isolation. — Hanover

    The only strawman here is the one you made. It is not a matter of reading the myths literally. How do you understand the following:

    Forming light, and preparing darkness, Making peace, and preparing evil, I [am] Jehovah, doing all these things.' — Isaiah 45:7

    Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” — Job 2:10

    The term translated as evil is ra'. It means bad, trouble, adversity, calamity.

    If they did, adherents would be stoning little girls. — Hanover

    I raised this problem before, but you ignored it. By what light do we read such passages from Deuteronomy? I think it obvious that we read them in light of beliefs and values which are not fixed and eternal, but relative to time and place. Those who wrote and those who first heard the Law did not think that it was not to be taken literally.
  • Atheism
    At least we can define God as the good ... — Hanover

    The God of the Hebrew Bible cannot be defined as good without ignoring all the bad things attributed to him. The stories may be myth but as you say:

    By the same token, that it is fiction doesn’t mean it can't contain truths. — Hanover

    So what is the truth about God as depicted in the stories of wrath and destruction? Do you think the depictions are false because they do not conform to God as you define him? One might just as well say that God as you define him is a fiction. It seems far more simplistic and lacking in sophistication.
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    And neither is there any repetition of the past. — Joshs

    In the section "The Vision and the Enigma" in Zarathustra:

    “Observe,” continued I, “This Moment! From the gateway, This Moment, there runneth a long eternal lane BACKWARDS: behind us lieth an eternity.

    Must not whatever CAN run its course of all things, have already run along that lane? Must not whatever CAN happen of all things have already happened, resulted, and gone by?

    And if everything have already existed, what thinkest thou, dwarf, of This Moment? Must not this gateway also—have already existed?

    And are not all things closely bound together in such wise that This Moment draweth all coming things after it? CONSEQUENTLY—itself also?

    For whatever CAN run its course of all things, also in this long lane OUTWARD—MUST it once more run!—

    And this slow spider which creepeth in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and thou and I in this gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things—must we not all have already existed?

    —And must we not return and run in that other lane out before us, that long weird lane—must we not eternally return?”—
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    ↪Paine


    This fits in well with the motif of going up and down, ascent and descent, higher and lower. Rather than the movement from this world to the eternal heavenly afterword, the circular movement may be seen from one perspective as moving up but from another as moving down. There is no final resting point.

    What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING.

    I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers.     — Zarathustra Prologue
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    Rather, the eternal return was first of all a lived experience, which was revealed to Nietzsche in Sils-Maria, high in the Swiss Alps, in August of 1881, and experienced as an impulse, an intensity, a high tonality of the soul—and indeed as the highest possible tonality of the soul. — Joshs

    I don't know what this means. Certainly not an experience like seeing the Grand Canyon which is there to be experienced. Perhaps like deja vu, which may be nothing more than the mind playing tricks on itself. Or Paul's vision on the road to Damascus, which was for him a profound experience but questionable with regard to whether it corresponds to anything other than what his mind has produced, a product of his imagination.

    All experience is a lived experience. There is something ambiguous about such an experience. No doubt there is something that is experienced, but the experience of actually being on the moon is not the same as having an experience that one has been on the moon even though you have never been there.
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    Have you read Deleuze? Do you think he is a good interpreter of Nietzsche? — Joshs

    I think we have had this conversation before. I have not read enough of his work to say; but if I did, do you think we would agree in our interpretation of his interpretation?
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    ↪dimosthenis9


    The quote above continues:

    Change of values—that is a change of creators. Whoever must be a creator always annihilates.
    First, peoples were creators; and only in later times, individuals. Verily, the individual himself is still the
    most recent creation.
    Philosophy the new "religion". — dimosthenis9

    I don't think he regarded philosophy as the new religion or "religion", but rather, religion is what creators create. To what extent they believe their own mythologies is a deep and interesting question. The eternal return, for example
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    Let’s bring this down to earth a bit. — Joshs

    An intentional or unintentional pun?

    Do you think Nietzsche can be called an atheist? — Joshs

    Yes.

    And what is left of the notion of religion if the ‘Good’ is incoherent or irrational? — Joshs

    When religion is free of transcendence the creators of religion need not be bound to it.

    Don’t you think Nietzsche’s concept of the drives in relation to knowledge is crucial here? — Joshs

    Yes.

    Only man placed values in things to preserve himself—he alone created a meaning for things, a human meaning. Therefore he calls himself "man," which means: the esteemer.
    To esteem is to create: hear this, you creators! Esteeming itself is of all esteemed things the most estimable treasure. Through esteeming alone is there value: and without esteeming, the nut of existence would be hollow     — Zarathustra, On the Thousand and One Goals
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    We should pause to consider Nietzsche's idea of a god who philosophizes. This is part of his dialectic with Plato. He says:

    I am complete skeptic when it comes to Plato — Twilight of the Idols,

    Both are skeptics in the original sense of the term, and only a skeptic understands a skeptic. Skepticism in this sense is zetetic.

    If Plato had been able to speak freely he might have said: "The gods are dead". The situation then was very much like it was for Nietzsche. The gods could no longer be taken as a viable option, but religion in some form was necessary for the masses. In the mythology of the Republic in place of the gods stands the Good, transcendent, eternal, and unchanging. The philosopher is transformed from one who seeks knowledge to one who possesses divine knowledge.

    Nietzsche inverts this. Instead of the mythical philosopher who possesses divide knowledge, a god, Dionysus, is a true philosopher, that is, one who desires but does not possess wisdom. One who possesses what Socrates calls in the Apology "human wisdom", the knowledge that one does not know. In place of the fixed world of being is the changing world of becoming. But here too as in the Republic the philosophers are commanders and lawgivers (see above The Philosophers)
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    For instance, it is valuable as a tool for rules to control and pacify others. — Joshs

    Yes, but this is not simply for the benefit of the ruler. A significant benefit of Christianity was a matter of self-control. But what was then a benefit is no longer so, and this as a result of its success.

    But the real philosophers are commanders and lawgivers: they say "That is how it should be!" They determine first the "Where to?" and the "What for?" of human beings, and, as they do this, they have at their disposal the preliminary work of all philosophical labourers, all those who have overpowered the past - they reach with their creative hands to grasp the future. In that process, everything which is and has been becomes a means for them, an instrument, a hammer. Their "knowing" is creating; their creating is establishing laws; their will to truth is - will to power. - Are there such philosophers nowadays? Have there ever been such philosophers? Is it not necessary that there be such philosophers? . . . . — BGE 211

    But this is not simply for his own benefit. The philosopher is a benefactor.
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    ...in what sense is becoming and self-overcoming religion? — Joshs

    They should be viewed in light of what they are opposed to. They are by themselves no more religion than being and obedience are.

    He did not simply encourage people to have something to believe in. — Joshs

    People do not need to be encouraged to have something to believe in. They desire to believe in something.

    What he encouraged was recognizing that the ‘something’ one believes in is always transforming itself into something new, so it is the endless movement , the eternal return of the same movement , that he sees as fundamental , not the enslavement to something one believes in. — Joshs

    In part this answers your question regarding what becoming and self-overcoming have to do with a Dionysian religion. Historical awareness leads to nihilism. What he calls in " The Use and Abuse of History for Life" "deadly truths". These are no truths that a majority of people can live by. It leaves them rudderless. Religious inventions are not for the philosopher, they are creations of the philosopher for the benefit of the people.

    The eternal return of the same plays out in one way through the three metamorphoses of the spirit. From acceptance, I shall, to denial, the sacred no, to a new sacred yes, I will. The sacred yes is not enslavement, it is an assertion of the will to power. It is the end and the beginning of the turning of the wheel. The affirmation is not denied the moment it is affirmed. The stages of becoming follow one after the other, they do not happen all at once.
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    Nietzsche’s concern was how humanity would ‘replace’ religion. — I like sushi

    This is a common misunderstanding. He did not want to replace religion, he wanted to overcome Christianity. He recognized the importance of religion. People need something to believe in, something to follow. Nietzsche does what Plato did, the invention of a religion in the service of philosophy. Only Nietzsche's religion is to be an inversion of Plato's. A religion of the earth, a religion of becoming, a religion of the god Dionysus, of a god who philosophizes.
    .

    I, the last disciple and initiate of the God Dionysus: and perhaps I might at last begin to give you, my friends, as far as I am allowed, a little taste of this philosophy? In a hushed voice, as is but seemly: for it has to do with much that is secret, new, strange, wonderful, and uncanny. The very fact that Dionysus is a philosopher, and that therefore Gods also philosophize, seems to me a novelty which is not unensnaring, and might perhaps arouse suspicion precisely among philosophers. — Beyond Good and Evil, 295
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    To translate Freddy's famous phrase, it means "beyond religious (priestly) morality" — 180 Proof

    I think this is right, but should be seen within the larger problem of history. What is properly regarded as good or evil is historically contingent. At one historical stage the morality he sees as unhealthy was a means to man's self-overcoming, but it is no longer so.

    This a a problem he addresses in "On the Use and Abuse of History" from Untimely Meditations. He addresses the problem of nihilism. Those who think he was a nihilist should read this. It is the reason the "child" is necessary for the three metamorphoses of the spirit in Zarathustra. If what is called "good" today was at some earlier time "bad" and may at some future time be called "bad", if, in other words, there is no universal, fixed and unchanging transcendent good and evil than this can lead to nihilism. Nihilism, the "sacred no" must be followed by a "sacred yes", but this is only possible if there is a kind of deliberate historical forgetfulness, a new innocence.

    This, of course, should not be taken literally. The trope is one of Nietzsche's "inversions" of the innocence of the child in Christianity:

    And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. — Matthew 18:3

    For mainstream Christianity this is impossible. Following Paul, it is not man who changes but man who is changed. But the metamorphoses of the spirit are not dependent on some divine force outside oneself.
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    Write with blood' does suggest the Nietzschian path to be more about the call of being a writer than anything else. — Jack Cummins

    Note the title of the chapter is not "Writing" but "Reading and Writing". He is in part addressing writers with regard to readers -

    He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. — Thus Spake Zarathustra, Chapter 7, “Reading and Writing”

    But he is also addressing the reader with regard to those who write with blood, that is, spirit. Such writers do nothing more for the reader. It is up to the reader to make the unfamiliar spirit his own. Nietzsche more than anyone else was instrumental in the revival of the art of reading what is between the lines

    The subtitle of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is "A Book for All and None". Above all, Nietzsche is a philosopher addressing the philosopher of the future, one who is yet to be.

    As to a "Nietzschean path":

    This—is now MY way,—where is yours?” Thus did I answer those who asked me “the way.” For THE way—it doth not exist! — Zarathustra, The Spirit of Gravity
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit. It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the reading idlers. He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers—and spirit itself will stink. — Thus Spake Zarathustra, Chapter 7, “Reading and Writing”
  • The basic default of what a person must get out of life
    what differentiates in their lyrics' message country music from the blues? — god must be atheist

    Hank Williams sings:

    I got a feelin' called the blues, oh Lord
    Since my baby said goodbye     — Lovesick Blues
  • Athiesm, Theology, and Philosophy
    Are you onboard with Aristotle saying that the first principles that bring about the realm of becoming we live in is a matter of what he called "theology"? — Paine

    I think this was rhetorical. He is reported to have said:

    I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy

    In other words, he was well aware of the danger of allegations of impiety and atheism. So, the first thing to be said about first things must be said about the gods. But perhaps what is most revealing is what is not said. A prime mover is not something to be prayed to or sacrificed to. Prime movers do not protect or intervene on our behalf or reward and punish. They do not have priests or oracles or occult mysteries.
  • If there were a god, are they fair?
    According to Genesis, god gave human beings a form of "free will" lacking the strength or capability for us to freely refrain from "sinning" — 180 Proof

    Here is the first word on sin in Genesis, direct from God to Cain:

    But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it. — 4:7

    Paul's teaching to the gentiles is quite different. Here sin rules over man rather than man being able to rule over sin.
  • If there were a god, are they fair?
    But assuming there was an all knowing and all powerful god that created us and wants the best for us. Are they fair? — TiredThinker

    If what is best for us is fair then god, as stipulated, must be fair. If what is best for us is not what is fair, then, for our own good, god is not fair.
  • The basic default of what a person must get out of life
    Well, if your baby is the bass player in a blues band sometimes she has got to walk, but more often a shuffle is the bassic default.
  • Demarcating theology, or, what not to post to Philosophy of Religion
    ↪Hanover


    What is the essential element of your creation that cannot ever vary that leads to paradoxical conclusions?

    No logical puzzle arises from positing an entity to exempts itself from the rules it creates for others. The assumption seems to be that moral rules must apply without exception. The further assumption is that the creator of moral rules is like us in so far as it is free to obey or disobey the rules. But if what is essential about this entity is that its actions must be invariant then it makes no sense to ask whether it is bound by the moral rules it created.
  • Demarcating theology, or, what not to post to Philosophy of Religion
    Whether the creator of morality is bound by morality is a philosophical question for example. — Hanover

    It is a question that philosophical analysis shows to be ill conceived and question begging.
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