Atheism, Theism, and John's Prologue.

[F1fan]

Everlasting life is presumably of great value such that I wouldn't expect it to be obvious to those who have more mundane tastes and values.

Everlasting life is of value to the ego as it falls back on fear of death to formulate an absurd concept. Mature and balanced minds understand their fear and face it directly, and avoid the illusions that religions sell to their exploited followers.

 

[Link]

How old are you? Are you unaware that we did just that and the cultural prejudices of Iran rejected it when they took hostages in the late 70's. They rebelled against the Shah, the wealth, and the Western ways, and returned to poverty and the strict religious strictures that makes them feel like genuine Iranians rather than dark-skinned Americans.



John

Salam

I would love debate this issue with you, but it would be way off-topic from the OP.

 

[John D. Brey]

No. Theism and non-theism are highly abstract concepts, while self-awareness is quite primal.

I think there are good arguments that "abstract thought" is part and parcel of human self-consciousness such that it's fair to claim, as Karl Popper, and Rabbi Samson Hirsch have, that they come prepackaged in the primal days where the modern mind emanated onto the scene.

It was the emerging [`emergent’ according to Chomsky] human language which created the selection pressure under which the cerebral cortex emerged, and with it, the human consciousness of self.

Karl Popper, The Self and It's Brain.

In the beginning of human self-consciousness was the first word, and that first word was "God."

John's prologue.
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If people give up their religion I'm sure it is for excellent reasons

I agree. So long as you consider empirical observation, justifying fleshly logic and reason, a good reason to give up something that may transcend those things.

But, I suppose, if at the time of its release the soul is tainted and impure, because it has always associated with the body and cared for it and loved it, and has been so beguiled by the body and its passions and pleasures that nothing seems real to it but those physical things which can be touched and seen and eaten and drunk and used for sexual enjoyment, and if it is accustomed to hate and fear and avoid what is invisible and hidden from our eyes, but intelligible and comprehensible by philosophy -- if the soul is in this state, do you think that it will escape independent and uncontaminated . . . It is indeed no trifling task, but very difficult to realize that there is in every soul an organ or instrument of knowledge that is purified and kindled afresh by such studies when it has been destroyed and blinded by our ordinary pursuits, a faculty whose preservation outweighs ten thousand eyes, for by it only is reality beheld.

Plato --- Phaedo 81 b, Republic 527.​

Doubtful. No one ever knows about Jesus until they hear about it from others.

Agreed. Which brings in the sticky-wicket of election and predestination.

I'll say this as far as Jesus Christ and Christianity: if when the Spanish, Italian, English, Dutch explorers started traveling the globe and encountered indigenous people that had never been exposed to the West, but they were engrossed in knowledge about Christ and sin and salvation, that would be impressive. That would suggest there was a real divine force acting on the Planet and at work. This is what you seem to be expecting in your posts.

On the contrary. Your statement couldn't be further from the truth except for one proviso, the ancient people all over the world were stuck in the Jewish concept of these things. They had temples just like Israel, offered sacrifices and used the blood of the sacrifices for sacerdotal ornamentation and salvific purposes. Striving to go beyond Judaism, many of them believed in the virgin birth of a messianic king/priest god/man who would rise to free them from bondage to this slave-market of sin.

Jews claim Christianity is a pagan religion since they're quite aware that most of the elements of Christianity pre-exist Christianity in the pagan religions. Research Mithraism if you doubt that. Furthermore the history books are replete with stories of how those famous explorers you mention were shocked to the core when they tried to evangelize the indigenous peoples about Jesus only to have them respond, "Oh you mean . . ." after which they would recount their own, person, Jesus, but by a local name. Historians note that the Christian explorers were so shocked that they decided Satan must have created a counterfeit Christ, and a counterfeit Christianity, all over the world.

Shame on the famous explorers for being so simple-minded and uneducated that they think salvation comes out of the English, Dutch, or Spanish, script, sememe, or morphology. You can call him Zimmy, or Dylan, or Bob, or Jesus, so long as you call on him for salvation.

Jews claimed that Christianity exploded onto the scene precisely because the Gospels merely clarified, and refined, ideas that go back to the very beginning of time. The indigenous people rapidly and easily converted to Christianity once they realized they were just accepting another name for the same personage, new concepts for the identical ideas, and perhaps an advanced, and clearer understanding of things their ancestors believed and practiced for thousands of years. The Christians merely had to convince them that the myths and hopes of their ancient ancestors had actually, truly, been made flesh and blood in the person of Jesus Christ.

From the most elementary hierophany – e.g., manifestation of the sacred in some ordinary object, a stone or a tree --- to the supreme hierophany (which, for a Christian, is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ) there is no solution of continuity. In each case we are confronted by the same mysterious act --- the manifestation of something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that are an integral part of our natural “profane” world. . . the Fathers were right in fiercely defending the dogma of the Incarnation. From the point of view of the history of religions, the Incarnation represents the last and most perfect hierophany [manifestation of the sacred]: God completely incarnated himself in a human being both concrete and historical (that is, active in a well-defined and irreversible historical temporality) without thereby confining himself to his body (since the Son is consubstantial with the Father). It could even be said that the kenosis of Jesus Christ not only constitutes the crowning of all the hierophanies accomplished from the beginning of time but also justifies them, that is, proves their validity. To accept the possibility of the Absolute becoming incarnate in a historical person is at the same time to recognize the validity of the universal dialectic of the sacred; in other words, it is to recognize that the countless pre-Christian generations were not victims of an illusion when they proclaimed the presence of the sacred, i.e., of the divine, in the objects and rhythms of the cosmos

Mircea Eliades, The Sacred and the Profane.​

John