Narkissos
JoinedTopics Started by Narkissos
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105
What kind of atheist are you?
by Narkissos inchief rabbi leon ashkenazi said: "the difference between an atheist christian and an atheist jew is that an atheist christian does not believe that god exists, while an atheist jew believes that god does not exist.".
i'm not so sure about the jewish-christian borderline, but i love the nuance.. so which sentence suits you better?.
"i don't believe that god exists.".
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86
Death: Friend or Foe?
by Narkissos inthe jw and the (pseudo?
)scientific "hopes" of individual "everlasting life" (which have been connected on a couple of recent threads) have at least something in common: they all seem to take for granted that death is a bad thing.. as amazing as it may be to you, this amazes me so much that i don't know even where to start.
of course death hurts in reality when you lose people you love, or in imagination when you anticipate your own extinction.
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86
On the sound use of mental suicide.
by Narkissos inthis topic is meant as a follow-up of my recent conversation with r. crusoe on different threads.. it seems to me that the current popularisation of eckhart tolle's philosophy, resurrecting what i think is the very core of age-old mystical traditions (to put it shortly: death of the culturally constructed "self"), without the collective mythological, institutional and social settings for such an experience, is potentially very liberating but also very dangerous.. i am sensitive to that because i went through a similar experience when i left jws -- i felt both its empowering and destructive force, and, although i certainly don't claim to have dealt with it optimally (is that an adverb?
), i'm hoping that experience, good or bad, may benefit others, to an extent.
and i'm sure that i'm not alone in that case.. so i'd like this thread to be primarily supportive, even though that may include some theoretical and practical criticism.. .
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75
The "Historical Jesus" and Christian Faith
by Narkissos inin the wake of lovelylil's recent threads on the "historical jesus," a side question.. let's assume, for the sake of the discussion, that the four canonical gospels are not historical accounts of jesus' life, but a much later elaboration of christian faith in narrative form -- there are many reasons for such a proposal, but i'm not going into them right now -- let's just assume.. what do you think would be better or worse to find out in the historical field, from the perspective of christian faith:.
1. that there was no "historical jesus" at all, and that the gospels are essentially a religious myth made (hi)story, "the word made flesh" so to say;.
2. that there was a "historical jesus" completely different from the christian saviour -- for example, a galilean apocalyptic prophet and political zealot, trying to cleanse the nation and the temple from both the roman occupation and ritual disorders, with no interest at all in starting a new universal (i.e.
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72
Rationalism and religion
by Narkissos ini've not been too good at creating topics thus far, but for my 1000th post (in case you wouldn't notice .
we often oppose reason (ratio) and belief, as if those were mutually exclusive.
reason always works from presuppositions.
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70
And the Word was with God
by Narkissos inno this is not meant to be another trinity thread.
rather another shamelessly speculative / philosophical one.
one good thing with the latter: they are usually much shorter.. so we often discuss how the logos was or wasn't "god/god/divine" etc.
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61
Should the Christian faith be rationally defended?
by Narkissos inin the pretty miscellaneous "global flood" thread there were a couple of exchanges on the value of "apologetics" per se.
i think this subject is worth a thread of its own.
i will here recall some statements in the aforementioned thread:.
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56
Christianity after Nietzsche.
by Narkissos inmost of us are familiar with, or at least have heard of, friedrich nietzsche's virulent criticism of christianity: according to nietzsche the belief in, and desire for, "another (higher or future) world" and "eternal life" betrays a hatred of this world and real life, of power and beauty, of the animal and the "body," a "slave morality" which essentially consists in "resentment" against everything real, powerful, beautiful, etc.
christian "spirituality" is shameful "nihilism," nihilism in disguise, the central emblem of which is the cross, understood as the very negation of life, with the "will of power" and the cruel beauty it is made of.
nietzsche lumps together christianity and anarchism as expressions of the same basic rejection of reality.
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55
Nothing.
by Narkissos inperhaps this paradoxical "topic" is one with which we here have dealt a little more, or a little more consciously, than the average population.. we used to have our heads full of beliefs (which we called "truth") in every direction: on theology, on cosmology, on paleontology, on past history, on so-called prophetic future, on heaven above, on earth, on she'ol beneath.
on many things -- current events, traditions, other peoples' beliefs and behaviours -- we had strong opinions which were directly or indirectly (the famous "conscience" matters) part of the same deal.
and of course our life was filled with activities and relationships, a community of "friends," people to "help" or "teach," etc.. then, gradually or suddenly, we came to suspect, often with a measure of terror, that all of this was not what we had thought and might sooner or later turn into... nothing.. this "nothing" is perhaps one of the most scary thoughts to people contemplating leaving the org one way or another.
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54
The tyranny of religious experience
by Narkissos inin the discussion of religious or mystical subjects on this board, the "experiential vs. intellectual" issue often comes up.
while mostly those on the "experiential side" of the debate are content to share their experience without imposing it on others, sometimes the appeal to "experience" sounds like a subtle way of disqualifying the comments of "intellectuals" who cannot know what they are speaking about as long as they haven't got the "right experience".. i remember once discussing that with a welsh evangelical lady: she complained that pentecostals and charismatics in her neighbourhood dismissed her views because she was not "baptised in the spirit" according to their definition of the term.
i pointed to her that her fellow churchgoers were doing exactly the same thing when they dismissed the views of "unbelievers," or traditional believers who didn't claim to be "born again" in the evangelical style.. here the issue of qualitative or quantitative appraisal of religious/spiritual experience steps in.