The Christ is a very specific outlook/attitude/mentality which we all have the potential to acquire... which (for the record) I do not claim to have. So no, don't expect me to start washing your feet any time soon.

Thommo wrote:

GrahamH wrote:But in his philosophy there is no "outside" There is only "The One". Think of it as him opening up to his own "subconscious" He doesn't entirely deny that "other people" have valuable things to say, but he thinks 'they' are part of him.

Whatever they are, and I don't feel like quibbling over the label, "the voices outside his head" aren't telling him why he is right, or that he is right.

No, but he is challenging them, as he does in most of his posts, because he like to think his beliefs are thoroughly rational. In his mind he has challenged the sceptics (and, he claims, professors of philosophy) and they can't refute his logic so he is right. That this is largely fantasy is beside the point.

If you have a better explanation for his creating this topic what is it?

Thommo wrote:The problem with that is that from the point of view of the delusion, he's not right, so it makes no sense within his philosophy to ask "outside". And that's starting from a presuppositionalist viewpoint, if one admits the possibility of error as you suggested he should and starts from a neutral standpoint, then things only get worse.

All of this is also perhaps being uncharitable to James and assuming that he has deluded himself into believing he's the second coming of Christ, and I'm really not sure he has done anything quite so silly here.

I think jamest's position may in some ways be closer to Buddhism than to mainstream Christianity, which insists that the historical, unique, individual Christ is the one gateway to God and salvation? In Buddhism, as far as I can tell, the Buddha is the enlightened one who has spotted the Noble Eightfold Path, but the rest of us have the potential to be equally enlightened, provided, as a start, we agree with what the Buddha or his local priests tell us.

jamest wrote:......
I'm trying to give this some serious thought, because of course my philosophy makes possible The Christ in all, as indeed does the message of some other theists.

I think human social thinking probably does involve some fairly intractable confusions when it comes to subjectivity and objectivity, the independence of an external world from thought, but then I'm starting from the physicalist assumption that thoughts are the products of entirely physical brains, so I would expect jamest to dismiss any views I may have on resolving the confusion.

Where I disagree both with Buddhists and with jamest is that as far as I can tell they think that some human-like being or force is in overall charge, they assign a moral structure to the universe which addresses human moral concerns, so that good and bad deeds are punished or rewarded by something other than human actions (with or without frozen badgers). From the stars to the molecular structure of human brains, there's a huge amount of evidence that the mathematical laws of physics and chemistry provide accurate descriptions and predictions, and that human-like supernatural interventions are not there. I want miracles from jamest before I become a believer.

GrahamH wrote:

Thommo wrote:

GrahamH wrote:But in his philosophy there is no "outside" There is only "The One". Think of it as him opening up to his own "subconscious" He doesn't entirely deny that "other people" have valuable things to say, but he thinks 'they' are part of him.

Whatever they are, and I don't feel like quibbling over the label, "the voices outside his head" aren't telling him why he is right, or that he is right.

No, but he is challenging them, as he does in most of his posts, because he like to think his beliefs are thoroughly rational. In his mind he has challenged the sceptics (and, he claims, professors of philosophy) and they can't refute his logic so he is right. That this is largely fantasy is beside the point.

If you have a better explanation for his creating this topic what is it?

I'm not speculating about personal motives, it's not really in the spirit of the FUA, I'm talking about the content of jamest's alleged philosophy.

I'm attempting to get to the meaning in jamest's posts, to follow through rationally on his philosophy. For example, who would be asking or answering a question posted by jamest, or what is meant by the OP is asking for "how to find the messiah". I think that has to be taken I the context of his very long posting history on a form of solipsism.

zoon wrote:

Thommo wrote:The problem with that is that from the point of view of the delusion, he's not right, so it makes no sense within his philosophy to ask "outside". And that's starting from a presuppositionalist viewpoint, if one admits the possibility of error as you suggested he should and starts from a neutral standpoint, then things only get worse.

All of this is also perhaps being uncharitable to James and assuming that he has deluded himself into believing he's the second coming of Christ, and I'm really not sure he has done anything quite so silly here.

I think jamest's position may in some ways be closer to Buddhism than to mainstream Christianity, which insists that the historical, unique, individual Christ is the one gateway to God and salvation? In Buddhism, as far as I can tell, the Buddha is the enlightened one who has spotted the Noble Eightfold Path, but the rest of us have the potential to be equally enlightened, provided, as a start, we agree with what the Buddha or his local priests tell us.

jamest wrote:......
I'm trying to give this some serious thought, because of course my philosophy makes possible The Christ in all, as indeed does the message of some other theists.

I think human social thinking probably does involve some fairly intractable confusions when it comes to subjectivity and objectivity, the independence of an external world from thought, but then I'm starting from the physicalist assumption that thoughts are the products of entirely physical brains, so I would expect jamest to dismiss any views I may have on resolving the confusion.

Where I disagree both with Buddhists and with jamest is that as far as I can tell they think that some human-like being or force is in overall charge, they assign a moral structure to the universe so that human moral concerns are addressed, and good and bad deeds are punished or rewarded by something other than human actions. From the stars to the molecular structure of human brains, there's a huge amount of evidence that the mathematical laws of physics and chemistry provide accurate descriptions and predictions, and that human-like supernatural interventions are not there. I want miracles from jamest before I become a believer.

You may well be right about all that, and I don't have much to say in response.

The truth is I'm not much interested in "positions" or "philosophies" (and by this I really mean metaphysical commitments). If I die and suddenly awaken in the god-mind and find out idealism is true, I won't be thinking "wow, I should have listened all along", because a specious argument is still a specious argument. It's the quality of reasoning that interests me.

There are plenty of positions I hold that I object to here on ratskep because the arguments people put forward are (in my evaluation) extremely wanting.

The thing is we don't actually get anyone arguing for physicalism by and large. The closest we ever get is people saying that physicalism accounts for features in the world that idealism does not (e.g. why consciousness only occurs where there's a brain or other similar physical structure).

Try this thread, Jamest.
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/christianity/the-lord-s-prayer-t20807.html#p774661

I don't think 'a Christ' as defined by 'Christian' doctrine, exists.

All this guy Jesus was on about was a 'mind-state' which he thought was 'God'. Others who have claimed to have reached this meditative 'mind-state' describe it as a feeling of 'Infinity', 'Nothingness', etc. as well as a feeling of the presence of 'God' - by the more religious.
Another religion or philosophy might call this 'mind-state' Nirvana or Samadhi...

SafeAsMilk wrote:

John Platko wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:

John Platko wrote:

I certainly think one can question the wisdom of doing as he did with the likely consequences that one might expect from doing so. It's not easy to go against the grain of any society. But I don't know if I'd call that a "negative characteristics of Christs behaviour".

That you speak of abandoning women and children as "going against the grain of society" as if it were some noble act tells everyone everything they need to know about your perspective, I think.

It doesn't sound like it went down that way to me:

Then you better read it again, because that's exactly what it says. "Do it some other time when I'm not about to get special treatment" isn't a good argument any way you slice it.

That's not what it says, it says:

For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them.

They didn't need that perfume to go out and do good for the poor.

Save that Picard for yourself. Need has nothing to do with it. Apparently they can't whenever they want, because Jesus wants his precious perfume right now, dammit! And fuck those poor people when Jesus wants his perfume

Well I don't know where you live where convincing people to abandon their families, physical assault and dismissing the poor are no big deal. Around here and pretty much everywhere I've lived, that would be considered extremely shitty behavior.

Around where I live JC doesn't have much of a reputation for "dismissing the poor". And he's generally thought of as being non violent. And pretty much a kind and loving sort of bloke. But, it's true that those who lost profits weren't too happy with how he cut into their profits that day and they seemed to think a death sentence was the appropriate punishment.

Hey, it's not my fault if you and others don't actually read the book and ascribe a false reputation to him. Here, for instance, you're making the people who were peacefully sitting and selling their wares out to be villainous money grubbers in an attempt to justify Jesus' violence. Truly, there isn't a position so self-serving that a Jesus apologist won't adapt it. If some guy in your neighborhood was going around physically attacking people working in stores, it would be justice if he were arrested for it. Or perhaps you'd say he's just "not following the narrative"?

Sure, I want him arrested but I would think the death penalty a bit harsh. And everybody can have a bad day, you seem to expect Jesus to be perfect.

Being a rational skeptic can seperate you from your family if they are hell bent on their indefensible religious ideas but would you tell someone to stick to their religious script so that they don't ruffle their family feathers?

The fact that you see not leaving your family high and dry as "sticking to the script" is fucking heinous. Becoming separated from your family because of strong disagreements isn't the same as a guy demanding you abandon your family or else you don't get his special spirit sauce.

It's not like you'll necessarily be the one leaving your family if you decide not to stick to the religious script. Many a religious family can't handle someone questioning if a virgin birth actually happened. Some can't handle saying the earth is billions of years old. For some, evolution is - well forget about it. JC was just pointing out that if you want to break out of a family denial system, you better be prepared for the reality that doing so may also break up your family. That's just the way things work with humans on planet earth, that's not JC's fault - unless you believe he was the creator of all- and then I guess it is.

That's completely pulled out of your ass for all the relevance it has to that scripture. It doesn't say anything about conflicts within their families, it just demands they abandon their families and follow him if they want his special spirit sauce. Your apologetics are farcical.

Obviously Jesus didn't mean that if you want to follow him you must abandon your family, he didn't abandon his family. And obviously the Bible doesn't make much sense if you read it literally.

Most people know I'm not a Xian... as a Xian is commonly understood to be.

jamest wrote:The Christ is a very specific outlook/attitude/mentality which we all have the potential to acquire... which (for the record) I do not claim to have. So no, don't expect me to start washing your feet any time soon.

How sane was that mentality?

surreptitious57 wrote:

John Platko wrote:

surreptitious57 wrote:
If one ignores the negative characteristics of Christs behaviour in the Gospels and instead focused only on
the positive ones I would expect to see both humility and wisdom. But conveniently ignoring the negatives
would not be truly representative of him however so I would have to include them as well

What are all the negative characteristics of the Christ behaviour in the Gospels

Anger / disrespect / contempt / apathy / delusion are the obvious ones
They are all human traits that one would not expect to see in a Messiah

Realy? Did you read the OT? anger, disrespect, contempt, apathy, ... sounds like you
expect the apple to fall pretty far from the tree.

Tell us more about what you expect in Messiah.

John Platko wrote:
Obviously Jesus didn't mean that if you want to follow him you must abandon your family, he didn't abandon his family. And obviously the Bible doesn't make much sense if you read it literally.

That is not obvious at all. Many cult leaders make similar demands of followers. Families are dangerous to the cult. Don't mix with "suppressive personalities". If your family cautions a follower about their involvement with the cult shun them, intimidate them, 'hate them and follow me.'

Thommo wrote:

zoon wrote:………
I think human social thinking probably does involve some fairly intractable confusions when it comes to subjectivity and objectivity, the independence of an external world from thought, but then I'm starting from the physicalist assumption that thoughts are the products of entirely physical brains, so I would expect jamest to dismiss any views I may have on resolving the confusion.

Where I disagree both with Buddhists and with jamest is that as far as I can tell they think that some human-like being or force is in overall charge, they assign a moral structure to the universe so that human moral concerns are addressed, and good and bad deeds are punished or rewarded by something other than human actions. From the stars to the molecular structure of human brains, there's a huge amount of evidence that the mathematical laws of physics and chemistry provide accurate descriptions and predictions, and that human-like supernatural interventions are not there. I want miracles from jamest before I become a believer.

You may well be right about all that, and I don't have much to say in response.

The truth is I'm not much interested in "positions" or "philosophies" (and by this I really mean metaphysical commitments). If I die and suddenly awaken in the god-mind and find out idealism is true, I won't be thinking "wow, I should have listened all along", because a specious argument is still a specious argument. It's the quality of reasoning that interests me.

There are plenty of positions I hold that I object to here on ratskep because the arguments people put forward are (in my evaluation) extremely wanting.

The thing is we don't actually get anyone arguing for physicalism by and large. The closest we ever get is people saying that physicalism accounts for features in the world that idealism does not (e.g. why consciousness only occurs where there's a brain or other similar physical structure).

You are perhaps taking exception here to my calling myself a physicalist? – in that I am thereby expressing a metaphysical commitment which goes beyond the available evidence and arguments?

I’m contrasting physicalism with idealism here, jamest being an idealist. It seems to me that idealism does imply that the universe is ultimately controlled by something like a human mind. The arguments against idealism are, I think, the same as those against theism: the huge and increasing volume of evidence that everything we are aware of follows mathematical descriptions, contrasted with the effectively total lack of evidence for supernatural events. I agree with you that this is not 100% certainty, it does not, for example, approach the certainty of mathematics.

My position is that I can’t know anything for certain, even that 2 plus 2 equals 4, but that to worry about this, or to be careful to express my uncertainty in everything I say, is a route to madness (it defeats itself, for starters). Assuming physicalism (OK, there’s a problem there), my brain was designed by natural selection not to discover any ultimate truth, but to control my body in ways that promote the survival of my genes. There’s nothing to stop human brains (e.g. after a stroke) being wrong about simple mathematics or anything else, and sometimes they are designed to be overconfident about fallible guesses.

For practical purposes other than discussing brains in vats and such, 2 plus 2 is damn well 4 as far as I’m concerned (though I think Russell and Whitehead took a 3 volume book to prove that 1 plus 1 is 2?). For a dodgier commitment, such as my atheism, I am happy to express my readiness to look into further evidence, to consider the possibility of miracles. At the same time, I call myself an atheist, not an agnostic, because I think the probability of there being some human-like being in charge of the universe is, for most purposes, small enough to be ignored. I could be wrong, and the line’s a fuzzy one, but, again, expressing uncertainty all the time instead of leaving it to be understood by the audience is something of a waste of communication space.

I call myself a physicalist in the same spirit in which I call myself an atheist. I think theists are wrong and atheists are right, and when I say this, I hope that my audience will take my caveats as read. In the same sort of way, if I promise a friend to come and help in the garden at a certain time, I assume the friend will take as read that if there’s a life or death emergency where I have to help instead, then I will break my promise. Language is full of unstated assumptions, or it wouldn’t be fast enough to be a viable communication system?

I’m sure that 2 plus 2 equals 4, I’m reasonably sure that there are no gods, and my plans to meet up with family in a couple of hours are full of uncertainties which we didn’t bother to mention when drawing up those plans. At the same time, I accept that I can’t be sure of anything. Is this just wildly woolly thinking?

zoon wrote:You are perhaps taking exception here to my calling myself a physicalist? – in that I am thereby expressing a metaphysical commitment which goes beyond the available evidence and arguments?

No, not at all. You're very welcome to.

I'm saying that I don't think our interests in this matter really align and I don't want us to talk past one another. I certainly mean no disparagement, you're making a positive contribution to the thread, which is always a great thing, I just don't have a lot to say about the points you make, one way or the other.

John Platko wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:

John Platko wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:
That you speak of abandoning women and children as "going against the grain of society" as if it were some noble act tells everyone everything they need to know about your perspective, I think.

Then you better read it again, because that's exactly what it says. "Do it some other time when I'm not about to get special treatment" isn't a good argument any way you slice it.

That's not what it says, it says:

For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them.

They didn't need that perfume to go out and do good for the poor.

Save that Picard for yourself. Need has nothing to do with it. Apparently they can't whenever they want, because Jesus wants his precious perfume right now, dammit! And fuck those poor people when Jesus wants his perfume

Well I don't know where you live where convincing people to abandon their families, physical assault and dismissing the poor are no big deal. Around here and pretty much everywhere I've lived, that would be considered extremely shitty behavior.

Around where I live JC doesn't have much of a reputation for "dismissing the poor". And he's generally thought of as being non violent. And pretty much a kind and loving sort of bloke. But, it's true that those who lost profits weren't too happy with how he cut into their profits that day and they seemed to think a death sentence was the appropriate punishment.

Hey, it's not my fault if you and others don't actually read the book and ascribe a false reputation to him. Here, for instance, you're making the people who were peacefully sitting and selling their wares out to be villainous money grubbers in an attempt to justify Jesus' violence. Truly, there isn't a position so self-serving that a Jesus apologist won't adapt it. If some guy in your neighborhood was going around physically attacking people working in stores, it would be justice if he were arrested for it. Or perhaps you'd say he's just "not following the narrative"?

Sure, I want him arrested but I would think the death penalty a bit harsh.

Could not be any less relevant to the conversation if you tried, aside from the fact that he wasn't crucified just for attacking the merchants.

And everybody can have a bad day, you seem to expect Jesus to be perfect.

I have no expectations at all of Jesus, his followers claim he is perfect. You asked what bad things he did, I listed them. You attempted to defend them, and failed. Just so we know where the conversation is.

The fact that you see not leaving your family high and dry as "sticking to the script" is fucking heinous. Becoming separated from your family because of strong disagreements isn't the same as a guy demanding you abandon your family or else you don't get his special spirit sauce.

It's not like you'll necessarily be the one leaving your family if you decide not to stick to the religious script. Many a religious family can't handle someone questioning if a virgin birth actually happened. Some can't handle saying the earth is billions of years old. For some, evolution is - well forget about it. JC was just pointing out that if you want to break out of a family denial system, you better be prepared for the reality that doing so may also break up your family. That's just the way things work with humans on planet earth, that's not JC's fault - unless you believe he was the creator of all- and then I guess it is.

That's completely pulled out of your ass for all the relevance it has to that scripture. It doesn't say anything about conflicts within their families, it just demands they abandon their families and follow him if they want his special spirit sauce. Your apologetics are farcical.

Obviously Jesus didn't mean that if you want to follow him you must abandon your family, he didn't abandon his family. And obviously the Bible doesn't make much sense if you read it literally.

It isn't obvious at all that isn't what he meant, because it's what he's written as having said. Just because something in the Bible contradicts itself or doesn't make much sense doesn't mean you aren't reading it right. You'd have to show that to be the case, not just hand-wave and assume it's meaningful if you twist and mangle it enough with "interpretation".

Thommo wrote:
Still, although I'm critical of the content, I do applaud that you came back and answered Fallible and SAM's request with a constructive post, thanks for that.

I actually think it was a pretty good post, not because of all the messiah/Christ nonsense, but because the actual content is pretty clearly about attempting to have better conversations with people, it seems to me. He's still got the problem of seeing anyone who disagrees with him as "the unwashed masses" (which is one of his primary stumbling blocks), but overall I appreciate the sentiment. I'd be happy to have conversations with jamest where pointing out a problem with what he's said is met with understanding and thoughtful arguments informed by those objections instead of the ineffectual irrelevant counterattacks we've come to expect.

jamest wrote:IF there were a Christ amongst us, it should imo be possible to verify this without the need for 'miracles'. Why? Because (from my perspective anyway) a Christ would be an individual who knew that 'it' was God, thus was not fooled (as we all seemingly are) into believing 'it' was human. The Christ would know without a doubt that being human is merely a dream - indeed, a lucid dream.

This is a problem of how one can test one's own beliefs. If you have an overwhelming conviction that you are a messiah, but you find sign of an ability to perform miracles and no objectively verifiable knowledge of things you would not otherwise know how can you validate your belief?

To take Plantinga's example cited by WLC, if all the objective evidence shows you committed a murder but you have no knowledge of doing it, how can you test the hypothesis that you are indeed innocent?

I don't think the person that believes they are Christ can test that belief to any substantial extent except by objectively verifiable exceptional abilities. If all you have is personal conviction you may very well be wrong.

This seems to me to be a fundamental problem for many religious convictions. Some people claim to have an experience of omniscience, of understanding everything in a moment. I think this has virtually zero truth value. It's just a form of sense experience, a sense of knowing, but what is conspicuously absent is any ability to apply any piece of this supposedly omniscient knowledge. You should know everything that can be known far beyond mortal limits and yet all you can express is trivial deepity.

WLC / Plantinga's argument seems without merit.

What have you got, jamest? What good is it to "know you are God", with whatever degree of certainty, without the ability to verify it? How else could you verify it other than to exercise divine power?

We should not forget that there is no shortage of people who have held a messianic belief and no doubt all of them would disagree with the validity of each other's claims. But by jamest's thesis that "a Christ would be an individual who knew that 'it' was God, thus was not fooled" is of no use whatsoever because it ignores all those that "know they are God" when they are not.

John Platko wrote:

surreptitious57 wrote:

John Platko wrote:

surreptitious57 wrote:
If one ignores the negative characteristics of Christs behaviour in the Gospels and instead focused only on
the positive ones I would expect to see both humility and wisdom. But conveniently ignoring the negatives
would not be truly representative of him however so I would have to include them as well

What are all the negative characteristics of the Christ behaviour in the Gospels

Anger / disrespect / contempt / apathy / delusion are the obvious ones
They are all human traits that one would not expect to see in a Messiah

Realy? Did you read the OT? anger, disrespect, contempt, apathy, ... sounds like you
expect the apple to fall pretty far from the tree.

Tell us more about what you expect in Messiah.

'Us'? Speak for yourself.

No point in being a Christ if you can't do the water into wine shtick, or at least walk on it.

SafeAsMilk wrote:

John Platko wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:

John Platko wrote:

That's not what it says, it says:

They didn't need that perfume to go out and do good for the poor.

Save that Picard for yourself. Need has nothing to do with it. Apparently they can't whenever they want, because Jesus wants his precious perfume right now, dammit! And fuck those poor people when Jesus wants his perfume

Around where I live JC doesn't have much of a reputation for "dismissing the poor". And he's generally thought of as being non violent. And pretty much a kind and loving sort of bloke. But, it's true that those who lost profits weren't too happy with how he cut into their profits that day and they seemed to think a death sentence was the appropriate punishment.

Hey, it's not my fault if you and others don't actually read the book and ascribe a false reputation to him. Here, for instance, you're making the people who were peacefully sitting and selling their wares out to be villainous money grubbers in an attempt to justify Jesus' violence. Truly, there isn't a position so self-serving that a Jesus apologist won't adapt it. If some guy in your neighborhood was going around physically attacking people working in stores, it would be justice if he were arrested for it. Or perhaps you'd say he's just "not following the narrative"?

Sure, I want him arrested but I would think the death penalty a bit harsh.

Could not be any less relevant to the conversation if you tried, aside from the fact that he wasn't crucified just for attacking the merchants.

And everybody can have a bad day, you seem to expect Jesus to be perfect.

I have no expectations at all of Jesus, his followers claim he is perfect.

His followers claim all kinds of things, like he made bread and fish pop out of nothing. One must filter what his followers say.

You asked what bad things he did, I listed them. You attempted to defend them, and failed. Just so we know where the conversation is.

Well it's pretty hard to defend self appointing yourself to be in charge of the temple and then causing a stampede. The other stuff is subject to interpretation. As I said, leaving a religious faith can separate you from your family but sometimes that's what's best for you to do.

It's not like you'll necessarily be the one leaving your family if you decide not to stick to the religious script. Many a religious family can't handle someone questioning if a virgin birth actually happened. Some can't handle saying the earth is billions of years old. For some, evolution is - well forget about it. JC was just pointing out that if you want to break out of a family denial system, you better be prepared for the reality that doing so may also break up your family. That's just the way things work with humans on planet earth, that's not JC's fault - unless you believe he was the creator of all- and then I guess it is.

That's completely pulled out of your ass for all the relevance it has to that scripture. It doesn't say anything about conflicts within their families, it just demands they abandon their families and follow him if they want his special spirit sauce. Your apologetics are farcical.

Obviously Jesus didn't mean that if you want to follow him you must abandon your family, he didn't abandon his family. And obviously the Bible doesn't make much sense if you read it literally.

It isn't obvious at all that isn't what he meant, because it's what he's written as having said. Just because something in the Bible contradicts itself or doesn't make much sense doesn't mean you aren't reading it right.

Well .. I guess I'm just going to have to concede that point to you because you're right about that.

You'd have to show that to be the case, not just hand-wave and assume it's meaningful if you twist and mangle it enough with "interpretation".

It's impossible to "show that to be the case." We can't know what JC actually had in mind 2000 years ago from the bits of error riduled information we have had passed down to us. We can only take our best guess at it. Give the ideas a go and then see what happens.