This is exactly what I've been talking about. How do you know what a Christian thinks?

There's a book full of words, and then--because Christianity is a personalized religion--there are as many different ways to 'be a Christian' as there are Christians. That's what, a little over 2 billion?

It doesn't matter what you think you know, it's irrelevant, we're not comparing scholarly genital sizes, and what you're attempting to address is independent of Catholicism.

The story in which God commands Abraham to kill his son is a poor example, and you're making it obvious that you don't understand the literal text or the metaphor it implies. You were talking previously about it as though Abraham actually killed his son and God commended him for doing so. Now you're talking about God's intentions, and it was made clear in the text that God never intended Isaac to be harmed. Also, he's God, so he can just bring the kid back to life or give Abraham 20 replacement sons while Isaac lives in heaven, or whatever. It's the bible.

Christians, as well as Jews, never asked for Jesus in the story. Jews actually rejected him, which is an integral part of the story, and he told his disciples to spread his message to 'the gentiles'.

I think you guys are both conflating these Christian concepts of God and the Devil. The terms 'God' and 'Satan' apply to specific things within the religion. If God commits an evil act it isn't 'Satanic' because only things from Satan can be 'Satanic', and vice versa, if Satan doesn't appear to be evil, he's not 'Godly'. God's evil acts are not considered evil by a Christian, or they are but maybe the end justifies the means.

I think if you're going to talk about a religion, you should do so on its own terms, otherwise you're just making stuff up and saying made up things about the stuff you made up. The average Christian hasn't read or followed the book.

And do you have any idea how many completely different kinds of Catholics there are worldwide?

Also, the original post in this thread covers like a hundred different complex topics, about none of which a sound or rational thing was posited.

Those practices--and let's be real here, Christians aren't eating a person--are based upon pagan religions much older than Judaism, in which the sun was worshiped or human bodies were consumed regularly. To call it 'Satanic' is weird considering that its doctrine and those of Judaism both outline what that means. Also, it was God who granted Satan permission, actually implored him it seems, to ruin Job's life, fill him with sores and have his family murdered by bandits. Satan often seems to me like a spoiled rich kid who asks 'why' and talks back a lot and is impatient about taking over the family business.

'Mind' is a label for something the existence of which is speculative. How we perceive thoughts is not necessarily how they occur, and we can only imagine them occurring without a brain, which is further speculation. Many things were not familiar to us as physical and now are just that--physical. I agree that correlation isn't solid evidence, so to say that thoughts are physical is speculation as well. I can't begin to say that I understand how or why we've become self-aware, which is really what's led to our notion of 'non-physical' things, although I have pondered it extensively.

That being said, I don't 'believe' that anything exists or can be discussed which is not a direct result of some physical process, and physically linked, physically dependent in some way.

Those are indications of words on a page in a book. Belief is irrelevant to the topic, I don't understand what you think belief has to do with it.

This simply is not true. The Bible says God visited Mount Sinai and helped Moses write the commandment tablets. Moses asked if he could see God's face, and God said no because the man would die, but he allowed him to see or feel his hand pass over.

Also in that instance, God could be seen by the masses descending onto the mountain as a giant fiery cloud making noise with lights flashing around it.

God's voice walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and a voice requires physicality.

Jacob wrestled with God in the desert and said "I have seen the face of God and lived". Many Christians would argue that this was an angel or Jesus, but that's not what the book says and is speculation.

Jesus was God in human form, and the 3 aspects of God are inseparable. The Christians who argue that this is not true are a very, very small minority.

These are just a few examples.

Also...heaven is ascribed earthly measurements and qualities which are physical. It's like a giant cube with streets of gold, etc. Also...the new Jerusalem exists on Earth after God destroys the world, and this is where God resides in person forever with the chosen 144,000 Jews.

'Afterlife' doesn't give life meaning. If anything, death gives life meaning, but meaning is imaginary.

I'm a "cis white male" and wouldn't place myself in a category such as "powers that be". In fact, a majority of visible minorities are doing far better for themselves than I am for myself. So I'm wondering now what it is you think you're talking about. Are you saying that, in modern times, with legislation that protects and equalizes all people based on merit--and then promotes visible minorities based on social and economic inequities and perceived inequalities--if a "cis white male" is elected to some office, any office, or given any position of authority over anyone, I'm then in a position of power by virtue of my skin colour? Is that really what you're saying here?

And do you get that what you're saying, if I understand correctly, is racist and dehumanizing?

Also, given that you believe guilt is transferable between people of a common skin colour, are you then willing to serve prison time for a stranger's crimes?

What is a mind? Your post certainly has no mass. Perhaps you could include some reasoning as to what a mind is and why it should have mass?

I'm not an atheist as any result of 'arguments'. I think though that you have to define which 'atheists' you're referring to: those who go "blah blah parrot celebrity quotes pretending I came up with them myself attack attack" or those who merely don't believe in gods.

What is this thread, exactly? It looks on the surface like some people crying because Trump is president, some other people demonstrating the foolishness of the crying posts with facts and then a few people just mocking the crying posts because they're redundant, weak and insipid and unworthy of debate.

Science is not a study of the world as “separate from ourselves”. Science is as objective a method as we have ever had available to us. Anyone who attempts to conduct it subjectively is incorrect. Anyone who attempts to separate humans from nature is incorrect.

It works for a little while before it gets worn to mush and all kinds of nails stuck in it and its usefulness deteriorates exponentially.

Philosophy is like using a baseball bat as a hammer.

The world is saturated with people who "complain too much" while complaining to others they "complain too much".

No one experiences my thoughts.

Seriously man, if you see a car slam its brakes on the freeway do you just drive into the back of it?

Calm down.

But they pick up more than the slogan, they base their lifestyle on it. It consumes them. This is what is accomplished when a society revolves around purchasing commodities.

Every figure of speech is just blah blah. 80% of people have little to no idea what they're saying or doing or why.

I guess what I'm thinking is that whoever says that, if you challenge the notion to their face, they back pedal or go blah blah, and they really seem to have no understanding of the figure of speech. It came from somewhere and spread like a virus, just like "yoga" and "I'm going to surround myself with people who are brimming with false optimism".

By saying Ontological Eliminative Materialism you're admitting that the notion of being philosophical is a vice for you. No one talks like that in real life. It's just as dysfunctional as being in love with the idea of being in love.

Have you met an alien?

Go easy on me, translation: shred me to bits.

Because you don't deserve to see it.

I'm not sure who says "do something about it" other than idiots and sociopaths. Are you saying that you perceive idiots and psychos as social norms in this day and age?

It depends what you mean by one thing. If you take it to the bottom or to the top all things inevitably end up being one thing.

Philosophy isn't problematic. The habits of ignorant or malicious people are the problem.

Adults who possess authority and stupidity and lack maturity and are exploiting students to create a generation of idiots.

There's nothing interesting about it. I'm not angry about comments from students, I'm angry about comments from the adults indoctrinating them.

The idea that anything is innately "Eurocentric" is absurd. It's a notion that Europeans, because they did this or that, have only ever come up with terrible and oppressive ideas and should have their entire history diminished to "white male patriarchy" and "oppression". It's racism. It discredits all things that are not politically or religiously convenient, even if they're obviously true, based on who or where they came from.

It's all just idiocy. That anyone even feels compelled to say this is absurd. "Enculturate", really? These are the same people who say that whites have no culture. How can anyone "enculturate" into an absence of culture? What is anyone even saying anymore, it's all just make-believe? Are we heading into just willful stupidity?

I'm triggered, man, this is just blind hatred. There's no philosophy in it.

So the OP is trolling, right? I was going to say that there's no way anyone thinks like this, but I'd be lying to myself.

If the OP is actually sincere, then it needs to go back to the philosophical drawing board because everything described in it counters its intended point, and no amount of deep pondering can change that.

Which makes it possible for someone to refer to a topic in general terms without either knowing or understanding specifics.

Why does everything have to be transmogrified by human imagination into an ism, do we do this to convince ourselves of an intellect we don't actually possess?

It's a compilation of subjective moral pressures that causes us to consider something morally good or evil. Countless instances of acceptable murder have only recently been legitimized as evil.

The death penalty is an example of this, as are the Roman colosseum and other instances of fighting for sport, warfare including suicide or death at the hands of oneself or one's allies for the sake of honour, killing of slaves, killing of unborn or unhealthy babies--to name a few.

Being raised from birth is not a requirement in order to remove the veil of morality from any particular crime.

If acts aren't objectively immoral, then opinions certainly aren't.

Animal tendencies lean toward what we would call anarchy. It is a resistance to our animal tendencies that has led us toward our various systems of morality. It's a desire to appear to ourselves and each other to be superior to other animals or to each other, or not to perceive ourselves as animals at all, that causes us to label the anarchy of our species as order and civilization.

Interestingly, I just read a note from Nietzsche on the tendency of social trends to override opinions when powerful or influential voices place pressure on societies to change how they view or act on things. We're presently experiencing just such an attempted overriding of opinions due to the senseless ambitions of globalists.

Person A is implying that all religion apart from person A's chosen religion--is a bull in the China shop of society.

Person B is quoting Person A's belligerent and intolerant, at times incoherent, commentary and suggesting where Person A is incorrect about both writings and practices within the religion(s) to which Person A is referring.

Person B is directly addressing the contents and the nature of the OP.

Person A is responding with immaturity and contempt to anything that points out the obvious errors within Person A's commentary--from Persons B, C, D, etc.

Person B is not "mentally representing" any religion or making any attempt to address religion but rather referring to writings within the same religion to which Person A is referring that contradict what Person A is saying.

There's no argument about religion, there is an argument about dishonesty and misrepresentation.

My argument is that Person A is dishonest, uninformed and willfully biased and creating or responding to numerous threads with the sole intention of propagating his/her own religion while attempting to manufacture faults in others where no manufacturing is required.

People are unequal in countless ways, but in certain idealists' world views people deserve to be treated as though they are of equal intrinsic value until they demonstrate otherwise, and maybe even after they demonstrate otherwise, depending on the severity of their demonstration.

There are numerous scenarios in which I would argue that equality is either assigned or adjusted in error, but the overall effect is that we're not extinct yet, so I suppose that's one inadvertent positive outcome.

I appreciate the humour in the "some are more equal than others" adage.

I can see why his mathematics are "of great philosophical interest". They mean nothing and lead nowhere.

Who said infinity was a number, other than four year olds?

This is what philosophy is all about, right? Answering the hard questions, like how do we prove there's something when really there's nothing? By saying words in combination with other words all amounting to a hill of beans, that's how.

When you have no meaning and no predators to contend with anymore, you have to pretend there are bad guys lurking in the shadows.

When you think that you and your tribe are the most important aspect of an incomprehensibly vast universe, you have to pretend there's something out there to dignify your larger than life egos.