1. Basic situation as I see it is this, God got it in the neck for the following reasons: a. Kant reduced demonstrations for his existence to a shakey moral inference. b. Philologists shredded the Bible so the text became unstable c. Voltaire & co mocked the inconsistencies.
I don’t know. It strikes me that Judaism stresses adherence to law and Islam stresses obedience to the will of God (there is also an Islamic school of thought that says taqiyya, lying to enemies, is moral). It seems only Christianity priorities truth in particularly.
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I'd be curious as to whether insiders see these emphases the same way, and, in case of Christianity, whether parts of the sacred texts (or practices etc. central to the religion) provide support for Nietzsche's thesis.
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I read the Bible every day, I think so. The problem with “insiders” is that they can’t be honest. Can a priest, a Rabbi, a liberal (degraded Xtian), or an Imam be really honest about what they think of their faith—esp. to an outsider? Their roles prohibit this very thought.
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My thought was a bit more straightforward. I’m interested in whether the Nietzschean thesis can be supported by Christian texts that explicitly prioritise truth in the relevant way.
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I think the New Testatment is mostly about this. Jesus comes as a force against law (the Pharisees & Rome) and for something higher, which seems to me to be redemption found in truth & love. Speaking this is the highest good, and higher than religious law or the laws of state.
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It’s embodied in the Christian motto: “Cor ad cor loquitur”. This is literally about having a heart-to-heart with God. The love of God arises from speaking sincerely and truthfully with Him.
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On another tangent, I wonder whether defining yourself by an ideal you will not be able to live up to has caused/will cause the demise of other large-scale movements. Perhaps the demise of Marxism can be read that way?
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I think this matter of truth is more a case of your ideal eating you rather than not living up to it. Nietzsche is, in this sense, the most consistent Christian after Christ—he takes the injunction to tell the truth to the limits.
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I suggest that only by having an ideal to follow that you achieve anything. Marxism isn’t dead; it’s alive under new names, and it shapes the pop cultural life of the West. It’s an eternal force: entropy. It just changes guises. Marxism died bc Marxism is anti-life.
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