Theism as prophecy

K-Pax
doomed: Do any gods exist?
doomed
K-Pax, I do not know.
RenaissanceMan
If your custard is standing, you're doing it wrong.
K-Pax
I think that it's pretty obvious there aren't any gods in the historical sense.
K-Pax
More interesting and more challenging is what about the idea that theism represents a prophecy of possible future worlds our descendants could inhabit.
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K-Pax
For example, in The Idiot, Dostoevsky states that, "Beauty will save the world."
RenaissanceMan
K-Pax: would you really want to be YHWH, though?
K-Pax
YHWH represented the intersubjective reality constructed by the humans inhabiting the Middle East 2500 years ago.
RenaissanceMan
K-Pax: I mean given a future of limitless possibilities, i can help think I wouldn't do what YHWH is supposed to have done.
K-Pax
No, I would not want to live in that constructed world.
K-Pax
Notably, YHWH isn't a leading theistic construct any more.
RenaissanceMan
Oh ok. I get it. I think.
K-Pax
Solzhenitsyn responded thusly to Dostoevsky's claim, "What sort of statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes -- but who has it saved?"
K-Pax
Now, I don't know if Solzhenitsyn's claim is strictly true, but it's largely true. Therefore, is Dostoevsky's statement false?
K-Pax
I don't think so.
K-Pax
It represents a prophecy. It's a description of a future world that Dostoevsky believes should be constructed.
K-Pax
I think it is in this manner that theism remains highly relevant, even though no gods exist.
K-Pax
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwLP62fL83k

K-Pax
I took the above from this video.
K-Pax
We know that -- and Cloud Atlas the novel explores -- that our lives our not our own.
K-Pax
How much are our lives influenced by Martin Luther King, Jr.?
K-Pax
We can see brother Martin in the ongoing protests.
K-Pax
And Martin Luther King Jr. was influenced by the prophecies surrounding Christ.
K-Pax
As Jordan Peterson would say, mirror Baudrillard, that is more real than real.
K-Pax
mirroring*
RenaissanceMan
I remember hearing about the assination of Martin Luther King on the radio when I was 8. It shaped me. For sure.
K-Pax
:)
K-Pax
Martin Luther King Jr. once was trying to prevent a group of African-Americans from responding to the latest injustice with violence.
K-Pax
(I think it was in Letter from a Birmingham Jail?)
RenaissanceMan
The Assassination of John F. Kennedy when I was three. My first memory. By virtue of the fact that it is firmly and precisely datable.
RenaissanceMan
Which also had a profound effect on my thinking.
K-Pax
He stated that in the future people would read about these African-American people and the injustice they received.
K-Pax
They would read about by any law they had the right to strike out in self-defense and in their demands for a better life.
K-Pax
But, that they would read, instead of a noble group of African-Americans who did not do those things. And such future generations would be moved by such actions.
K-Pax
I am that person.
K-Pax
And now you can be too.
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K-Pax
Martin Luther King. Jr was clearly trying to construct the Kingdom of Heaven with such speech.
K-Pax
He believed, as Christ taught, that beauty will save the world.
K-Pax
The belief that we exist in solidarity with all beings that have come before us and all beings that come after us pacifies our soul and fills us with the Spirit, as Christ would say.
K-Pax
And none of this requires any gods. ;)
K-Pax
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdiLxyGH8Lg

RenaissanceMan
CriticalPurple: Well for some reason these people tend to be disproportionately overweight. So many tons.
RenaissanceMan
22,000 tons, by my calcultion.
RenaissanceMan
Give or take.
K-Pax
RenaissanceMan: Will your live a life in which you honor the teachings of Brother Martin Luther King Jr.?
RenaissanceMan
Rough back of the envelope calculation.
RenaissanceMan
I was pretty close! :-)
K-Pax
The grace of Martin Luther King Jr. demonstrates his teacher is to be considered.
K-Pax
This is the power of being an excellent ambassador for Christ, Christians.
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K-Pax
Be like Martin.
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toad tries to remember ghost command
K-Pax
"I don't know about that whole Christianity thing, but some of these Christians are exceedingly noble human beings...surely there must be something going on there..."
toad