Rant against anti-atheist agnostics.

[Whateverist]

Morally, Aristotle's formulation points at why perfection in the abstract doesn't really make a lot of sense. He would say the best way is always a "golden mean" between an extreme of excess and another of deficiency. So the brave person was somewhere between foolhardy and cowardly. So perfection, if it exists at all, is a tension between traits. To me that suggests that it is always situationally dependent as well.

What we're talking about here is humans trying to reconcile their innate failings. Perfection is unattainable. That's a fact. Dealing with the life draining aspect of that is what Christianity confronts with this central tenet.

I don't think sin - wrong thoughts or actions (?) - are what drains life. Life for creatures such as ourselves is simply not limitless. We live quite a long life for a mammal of our proportions.

We are very complex creatures socially and psychologically. We have competing desires and interests. We can never have 'it all' because what we would want would include that which is incompatible. You would call that imperfection. I just call it life .. and I'm grateful for it on its own terms. I don't seek more.

[Brakeman]

Who said it was Rhythm load to carry? If I said you owe me ten thousand dollars for me doing your part on building my fence, do you really owe it?
Of course not, you would both have to agree to do it and get some benefit for yourself, neither apply here, as god is supposedly all powerful and he doesn't need anyone's help carrying a "load" for his own purpose, and Rhythm didn't make a previous agreement.

Yes. Like Rhythm, you seem to completely misunderstand. It's rhythms debt just as it is yours and mine. Because we're all flawed humans.

No I'm not misunderstanding you, I realize that you are trying to avoid explaining your first premise, that a debt is owed. I say no debt is owed just as in my fence work example. I didn't promise god I wouldn't do whatever the hell I wanted. I made no contract with him. I don't benefit from matching his wishes as I don't believe he exists. Furthermore, his heaven is just as bad as any hell to me. From a legal sense no debt is owed and from a moral sense no debt is owed. He didn't create me directly, my parents fucking did, so I don't owe him anything. Only in your con story does this "debt" exist and you need to sell us this bag-o-shit so that all your other woo cures make any sense.

[Whateverist]

Unless 'god' is seen as being on-board, this whole debt thing makes no sense for all reasons you say, Brakeman.

In the absence of any acceptably specific definition of a god, I've had to work overtime to meet theists more than half way. The only sense I can give to the idea of a 'god' is as that within us which assembles us and makes it possible for us to acquire a sense of individual identity and choice.

When you think about it, you realize that every single organism assembles itself from scratch. The information is in the DNA but that info is acted upon and you become assembled. If there is a creator 'god' it is literally dispersed in each and everyone of us and every other living thing on the planet. (This is the Devo half of Evo-Devo.) Pretty mind boggling albeit entirely natural of course.

While I am grateful to the mysterious wisdom of life to do this, I fail to see where there is any debt involved. Or any imperfection either, for that matter. Whether it is perfect or not I find it pretty damned amazing and do not feel qualified to judge it as imperfect.

[robvalue]

I am sick of all these anti-anti-athagnositc-bideistic non-naysayers.

[Whateverist]

You lost me. Who are these people you are tired of?

[robvalue]

The people who won't admit that the anti-polyagnostic gnostics can't provide evidence against the impossibility of an all knowing, all seing but atheistic based life form which is self agnostically opposed to the existence of anything that cannot but does exist.

Now where's my medication...

[Whateverist]

The people who won't admit that the anti-polyagnostic gnostics can't provide evidence against the impossibility of an all knowing, all seing but atheistic based life form which is self agnostically opposed to the existence of anything that cannot but does exist.

Now where's my medication...

[Tonus]

You tell me, you're the one that needs absolution that you cannot possibly earn or deserve. You're the one for whom a horrible act was committed which you cannot make reparations.

See, it would be pretty cool if god resurrected Eve, then had her go around offering everyone an apple. We'd all get the chance to say "no" (and stare at those perfect tits!!!) and god would save the ones who did so, and damn the ones who either took the apple, or jumped Eve's bones.

Which means that heaven would be full of straight women and gay men. Terrific.

[Whateverist]

You tell me, you're the one that needs absolution that you cannot possibly earn or deserve. You're the one for whom a horrible act was committed which you cannot make reparations.

See, it would be pretty cool if god resurrected Eve, then had her go around offering everyone an apple. We'd all get the chance to say "no" (and stare at those perfect tits!!!) and god would save the ones who did so, and damn the ones who either took the apple, or jumped Eve's bones.

Which means that heaven would be full of straight women and gay men. Terrific.

Nice quote in your sig, by the way.

"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."

-Stephen Jay Gould

[Chas]

Yes. Like Rhythm, you seem to completely misunderstand. It's rhythms debt just as it is yours and mine. Because we're all flawed humans. It's prideful to think, as Rhythm does, that you can overcome that flawed state.

But he didn't say that.

Best you can do is accept your flaws and get on with it.

And had you stopped right there, you would understand the human condition.

What Christianity is offering here is not denial of those flaws, or dismissal or irresponsibility, but acknowledgement of the fact and a means to overcome it. Symbolically, the sacrifice is as extreme as it has to be. The debt has to match the deficit. It's pretty much the point of Jesus life, to match that deficit.

But did you stop there? Nope, you had to add nonsense to it.
Christianity doesn't offer a means to overcome anything, only the acceptance of some bizarre notion of debt.

Debt to whom? Debt for what?