Comment on mrw someone tries to proselytize Christianity to me [Day 64]
lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
For God so loved the world that he invented a hell to throw people into so he could call himself merciful by sending his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
I think I might have gotten a weird translation there. Anyway, he loves you so much he might choose not to throw you into the lake of fire.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
That’s a post-biblical interpretation based on Greek philosophy (as is the omni-etc. god, which is contradicted a lot in the OT). Modern ministries are not only trying to lock people in by threat of Hellfire, but also keep their own members doubting their own salvation so they stay in church and tithing.
But science has advance amazingly far, to the point that we have many eyes, and centuries of looking for substance of the supernatural, and there is no place we’ve discovered yet where the material and spiritual interact. There are gaps in science. We still don’t comprehend how ball lightning works, for instance (and it’s definitely a thing) but curiously no religious ministry is pointing at ball lightning and saying see! a miracle and in the meantime lightning seems to be content to behave consistently according to the electrodynamics of static electricity.
But this all brings us to a nihilistic existential crisis: It takes ~20% of your caloric intake to run your brain, all that thinking, feeling, remembering, analyzing, receiving and processing stimulus through sensory organs and so one. That would mean ghosts and spirits, without a clear power source (and a noticeable energy consumption) could be at the heart of the sun and not notice the temperature, or have the capacity to care.
Oblivion is at the heart of zero energy consumption… unless we’re in a dream or simulation or something where the (extremely consistent) mechanics we deal with every day are computed, and some mechanics are deliberately hidden from us. As we’ve discovered a lot of our science through side-channel attacks, we’re prepared for anything that leaves a noticeable wake, and everything we know about does.
This is why enlightenment and post-enlightenment philosophers start at nihilism and start from the foundation of what now? E.g. what does it mean that our warlords can commit so much atrocity and there is no divine justice? It means it’s up to us to lament justice lost, and to make a society that does better.
Or, as according to current events, not. And have to learn again old lessons of why it is imperative to do better.