What is essential to Christianity

[Marcus]

[Rhapsody]

[Yukon Cornelius]

You guys kill me.

We're stuck in the middle of people who are willing to explain away the advent of all biological diversity -- by a mysterious "force" that can't be seen, measured, described/specified, or predicted.

Yet, it's all so "scientific"? Where's the dark ages, when we need them?

[Apollonius]

Yukon, Marcus,

Why the fuck are you here?

[Marcus]

[Torchwood]

[Marcus]

[Tinker]

[Tinker]

[Tinker]

[Rhapsody]

Okay, from the bare grounds and up.

What appears to me as essential to Christiantity is 1) that it gives moral and ethical guidelines on how to live, and 2) it is embedded in a mythical-superstitious landscape that is rather out of sync with this day and age.

[~]

"Mr Tinkah: Ah you now oh have you evah been a memba of the Materialist Pahty?" ...



I think "Community" is essential to Christianity.
Call it "The Body of Christ" or "Dinner on the lawn", group membership/identification is what defines most Christians.

[Marcus]

[Mr. Perfect]

[ansuchin]

[Tinker]

[Tinker]

[Caskhades]

[Tinker]

[Caskhades]

Nah, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is just a boogeyman to men like Marcus, and the abyssal intellectual depth of the poster is revealed by the fact that he misspelled the name twice in two freaking lines.

The scary thing, as you say, is that Nietzsche seriously grappled with the core ideas of Christianity, compared them to the only other thing he knew (the Greeks) and found them lacking. Not just in the usual protestant way -- oh, the true and pure ideals have been sullied by a corrupt Church, which is what protestants and heretics had been already saying for centuries.

No, Nietzsche goes to the very core of Christianity and finds it to be primarily based on what sociologists today call compensators: things that make people feel better about their (lower than desired) position in the world. Again, ST had a bunch of posts on this that explain it better, but the idea is that Christianity's appeal lies in the denial of the importance of material success of any kind. Worldly power is vain, sex with lots of women is a sin, money will lead you to hell, etc - basically everything people normally crave in the world (money, sex, power) is proclaimed to be bad, and traits associated with weakness (meekness, dependence, submission, low material possessions) is proclaimed to be a virtue. It was on this basis that Nietzsche calls it a slave morality -- and, seeing it as either merely making a virtue out of necessity (the case for most), or worse, for those few with potential to power, a refusal to grasp at and reach for one's true power, has nothing but the vilest contempt for it.

Nietzsche recognized before the sociologists that material wealth and comfort allays the need for such compensators, which leads to disbelief. The problem with Nietzsche is that he didn't really have anything to put in place of the fallen idol - his idea was to rush and burn the carcass, something is bound to take its place. The Romantic in him envisioned a renewed rise of the Aristocratic Greek ideals, but at some level he must have been aware that the cultural impact of Christianity is indelible. If you read his Also sprach Zarathustra, you will see how much contempt he has for what he calls the "Last men" -- for us: (dis)believers without strong ideals, who are not ready to kill for what they believe, who care mostly about their physical comfort. He rightly calls us animals, mere cows. The Christian in him recoils from the hellish vision, and he proclaims an apocalypse brought about by a triumphant messiah: the Übermensch, after which everything will be alright again - true heroes will exist, emotions will be strong and real, burning and freezing, not lukewarm.

Bah, these Romantic utopians... No better than Christians, really.

[Mr. Perfect]

Aferim, thanks for breaking down Nietzche, Netzche, Nachez, whoever, I had never looked into it.

I didn't know it was that preposterous. "Compensators"? Yikes.

[Tinker]

Caskhades But he chose the term, "God is dead". He chose a form that posited that God was once alive, but no longer, rather than attacking the idea or existence of God.


Mr. Perfect You have completely rejected Christian ideals, as well as the compensators so I can understand what you're saying. Christ taught that charity was the highest virtue and you say that "If you don't work you don't eat." So I can see why you hold the views that you do, because you don't actually believe in Christ, you believe in Ayn Rand. You believe that you deserve to eat because you move money from one account to another. You make money on scams like naked shorts and call that 'work'.

[Caskhades]

[Mr. Perfect]

[Caskhades]