Replying to Avatar Jeff Swann

Defining good & evil outside of any connection to reality is just delusion.

It doesn't really sound like you & I mean the same thing when we say "God."

The Bible is an extremely difficult book. It was written before any clear distinction between the subjective & the objective really existed. And it is full of metaphors & idioms from dead languages that just do not translate well. And I think some of the results of the story (or stories) have been confused into the telling itself.

As CS Lewis would say, when the writer comes back on stage it's the end of the show. Be careful what you wish for.

This life is the gift, there is nothing better to escape to. It is our responsibility to bring heaven to earth. No one is coming to save you, the events of the past have already given us all the stories we need to educate ourselves & others in order to avoid making the same mistakes.
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DRE 1y ago

I don’t know what defining good and evil outside of reality means. I should have clarified that defining OBJECTIVE good and evil can only be done by someone (God) outside our system (time space). Subjective definitions are just opinions, which is fine but also not helpful since there can be millions of conflicting opinions each one just as valid as the next.

God is the unmoved mover. The being that created time and space and everything inside it.

It is complex indeed, which is why we build on the work of others so we can understand the word of God.

CS Lewis was a prolific Christian. And indeed when Jesus comes back it will be the end of the show 😅 I don’t know if that is what you were alluding to, but it works haha

Life is a gift, but there is certainly something better to aspire to in heaven (being in God’s presence). Jesus did in fact come to save us. And the beautiful thing is that the gift of salvation he afforded us has to be accepted (free will). God will not force you into his presence.

“Stealing from God” by Frank Turek unpacks much of what we discussed in case you’re interested in the logic behind my arguments. You can find a free epub on Libgen.rs

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Jeff Swann 1y ago

I think God IS time & space & everything within it.

A map or a computer cannot contain all the information in the world. The amount of information that exists in any particular area is infinite when compared to what can be contained in a map or a model or an image. The movement of leaves & grains of sand & living things & all energy & matter simply cannot be capured or stored.

So for God to truly be ALL KNOWING & all powerful & ultimately in control of everything (without the control being arbitrary), God has to actually be the system itself. And so in order to get closer to God we need to better understand the world around us.

There are objective & discoverable laws of morality, but they are dictated by the nature of existence. Old books have very little to do with it, aside from being past efforts of people to write down & explain what they previously discovered.

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Shawn 1y ago

Odds are high that you’ll appreciate this book (and Hagen) as much as I do.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/777.Buddhism_Is_Not_What_You_Think

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Ryan 1y ago

My favorite short story...

https://archive.ph/cpzU1

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Jeff Swann 1y ago

Goddamn that's perfect

🥲

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Pepe NOSTRos 1y ago

Azimov. Wow. His buddy Heinlein must have hated this story haha. Too good. lotsa Foundation vibes to it too

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a source familiar with the matter 1y ago

I am that which I am

It is what it is

Existence exists

A is A

To my mind, the religious mindset at its best is the same as the scientific mindset at its best - allowing the world to be what it is, rather than thinking one's own ego shall shape it

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DRE 1y ago

Religion is just a habit of virtue that inclines the will to render God what he deserves.

Most people have a wrong understanding of what religion isa

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DRE 1y ago

God can’t be time and space. By definition he has to exist outside of it. Time and space had a beginning, so something outside of it had to cause it. The objective laws of morality come from God, which humans of course can come to know through reason because we are made in God’s image.

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Jeff Swann 1y ago

So then God isn't all knowing...? How does all of the information relating to all of existence exist outside of existence? If time & space has to have a beginning then why doesn't God have to have a beginning?

Everything is a result of the shape of existence & reality. Life probably exists as a result of some combo of oil & water, energy differentials, & a myriad of complex cyclical physical phenomena. Economic & moral laws emerge from the logic of life & beings with desires interacting with physical reality & each other.

I just think God is reality & we are made IN in the image of God.

'The miracle is that the universe created a part of itself, to study itself, and that this part in studying itself finds the rest of the universe in its own natural inner realities'

John C. Lilly

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Lew☦️ 1y ago

The full revelation of the God of the universe is realized in the 2nd person of the trinity, Jesus Christ. The Holy Scriptures point to and help unravel this revelation, but Christianity is not a "religion" of the book (like rabbinic judaism and Islam both are) rather is fully realized and experienced in the body of Christ, the continuation of the incarnation, the Church.

Saint Matthew covers the ways in which humanity can experience the God of the universe starting in chapter 5 of his gospel (the beatitudes).

These conversations are tough via the internet and I am not blessed to apologize for Christianity, but objective truth does exist and truth is a person-truth is God incarnate, truth is Jesus Christ.

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Jeff Swann 1y ago

Yeah, none of than language has ever made much sense to me & no one can ever explain it in a way that actually connects to anything.

The closest I have gotten is that as a result of evolution we have a triune brain, so it might make sense for us to feel that there is a trinity of sorts within us.

I see how the story of Jesus is incredibly important in understanding the nature of man & the divide between good & evil. And that awareness of our own nature leads to more intelligent & desirable behaviors. But most of the rhetoric around the whole thing just seems like parroted ritualistic nonsense that lots of people spout but no one actually understands.

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Lew☦️ 1y ago

Evolution is absurd at face but, like most everything we have been fed, has been accepted and has led to the deep atheism the world holds to in this post modern age.

Everything the world teaches has, at its root, the goal of denying both the incarnation and resurrection of the God-Man. That is why, 2000 years into the church, we have SO many absurdities around us. Denying Logos creates chaos.

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Jeff Swann 1y ago

I mean, farmers have been selectively breeding desired traits into animals to the point of producing livestock that is completely unlike their wild counterparts. People have stressed simple organisms in labs & used selective reproduction to create things that survive in completely different conditions & consume completely different substances for fuel, so it makes perfect sense to me that changing conditions & sexual selection would produce similar results across millions or billions of years.

I think the idea that some imaginary sky personality exists & designed & made everything with the snap of imaginary fingers is ridiculous, but I am not an athiest. I just think God is far more complex than the cartoon nonsense we were taught as kids. God is in the laws & the structure of the universe that set evolution & the creation of all that is into motion.

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Lew☦️ 1y ago

I dont think any reasonable person would deny the reality of species adaptation (foxes having particular ear sizes, birds having different beaks, humans having diffetent colored skin, etc) but species moving from one form to another is absurd.

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Jeff Swann 1y ago

I really don't think it is, it's just hard for people to grasp because it takes such an incredibly long time, and because everything as it exists now is equally evolved & adapted to fit its environmental niche. We didn't evolve from any of the monkeys that exist today, we evolved from something that came before both monkeys & humans.

Look at how dramatically different domesticated dogs are from any sort of wild dog. Bears are basically just a big dog. Life does crazy things in response to natural forces.

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DRE 1y ago

That theory hinges on the fact, more like the assumption, that everything came out of a primordial soup. If you examine the odds of that happening it’s infinitesimally small. Might be as small as guessing a private key honestly. Imo it takes more faith to believe that life came out of some primordial soup than it being the result of a creator.

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Jeff Swann 1y ago

I think it's the idea that there is some creator that created life in some way that violates all the rules of existence that really makes no sense. The wildly unlikely events that accomplish amazing things is how God appears to work in the here & now. How likely is it for some anonymous guy to create a new monetary protocol that solves all of our problems without taking any credit for it?

Highly unlikely things are at least plausibly possible, magical ressurections & people made from dirt & ribs are not possible. It's just magical thinking in an effort to wave away all the complexity of life. Make the stories real, take the magic out of them, & they become much more meanigful & they make a lot more sense.

Is it more meaningful for Superman to take a bullet for you, or for your dad? The more you deify Jesus the less meaningful the story becomes. But of course kings & normies all want him deified, because kings don't want normies to believe they can stand up to authority & change things, & normies don't want the responsibility or burden of having to stand against authorities for what is right. "Yes but he was God, who are you?" "Yes but he was God, who am I?" And obviously when we hold people up for doing great things they just naturally tend to become larger than life.

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Apatight⚡️ 1y ago

Well said, and the questions and curiosity as opposed to superstition should drive us all.

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Sedj 1y ago

Try this on - trinity is three realms or dimensions of being; heavenly god is pure energy, realm of heavens, undiscernable by man. Beyond the physical universe we can observe. Jesus (in christian myths) represents the physical realm, the physical observable universe of matter, time and space. The "holy spirit" is the interface or intersection between the two, think field energy. It is also boundary region between the two realms, neither fully energy or matter.

Although triune brain theory is interesting too, but probably itself a product of natural thinking in threes, three-dimensional, and many more concepts with two poles and a boundary region between them. Good and evil are often seen this way, with some gray area between. I think they are just as artificial as any triune or trinity, just a product of man's conceptualization of his own reality.

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a source familiar with the matter 1y ago

Monkey is

Monkey see

Monkey do