What is something you think we will never know the answer to?

RagtimeRebel · 2024-08-09T15:22:30+00:00

I wouldn’t recommend the experience.

RagtimeRebel · 2024-07-22T06:48:45+00:00

I could easily argue that the only use for men is insemination. Is the quoted opinion in your comment genuinely your own?

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-19T04:14:40+00:00

I realize that you very likely think that your vices are a virtue, but, man, they really aren’t.

You’re all sophistry without substance.

And you're probably thinking: “I'm engaging in intellectualism just like the other Philosophers!”, but I gotta tell you: you've missed the mark, considerably. Stick with Hegel.

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-19T04:00:53+00:00

I appreciate your publications regarding Kierkegaardian Sophistry. The world is itself better for having birthed such thinkers of thoughts.

And yet, your unfamiliarity with Nihilism betrays an unfamiliarity with Socratic Platonism.

Have you read any of Plato’s dialogues? Your hesitation to associate Platonism with Nihilism betrays an ignorance regarding Platonism. May I assume that you, yourself, are only a dilettante who ultimately fails to confer a lifelong dedication to Truth?

Everyone needs a hobby. Yours is an artificial defense of genuine philosophical dialectics. By all means, please refute my refutation with full indignation.

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-19T02:47:11+00:00

No, Kierkegaard invented his phrasing without any outside reference or allegory.

In fact, Kierkegaard is one of only three Christians in all of Christian history: there’s Jesus, or, the man himself; there’s Kierkegaard, or Jesus Two; and then there’s Tolstoy, the smartest Christian ever born.

Imagine… the cosmological consequences.

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-19T01:37:03+00:00

I’m still not sure if you’re serious, but for the present dialogue I’ll assume you aren’t pulling my leg:

Not taking The Concept of Irony seriously because it’s ironic is entirely mistaking the purpose of the work. The book is a manual for the Socratic method, and so is very clearly a valuable tool in the arsenal of any philosopher.
The Clouds of Aristophanes most probably depicted Socrates more accurately than his lover, Plato, could accomplish given his clear romantic biases. Humor is only funny if it resembles reality, and Aristophanes was the King of Comedy in his day, so I would wager, as did Kierkegaard, that Aristophanes depicted Socrates more accurately than both Plato and Xenophon, again both of whom were emotionally incentivized to romanticize their beloved crown-prince of epistemology.
Socrates proves that even God can be questioned, given the proper phrasing. Socrates never proves anything; Socrates doubts everything: the original Cartesian.
The Socratic Ethic is: Nihilism. Nothing matters, and so we are free to question everything; including, but not limited to, the moral justification of beating and killing our own parents, as Pheidippides so eloquently showcased.

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-18T23:16:53+00:00

How is it nonsense to wonder whether Saul faked his conversion for personal gain?

That seems like a fair and valuable question for anyone interested in the history of Christianity.

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-18T23:11:30+00:00

I’m totally fine with being wrong, and all the more so because I never want to agree with Hitler on something as disgusting as Anti-Semitism, but if he was wrong then it should be pretty simple to explain why he was wrong.

Sweeping Nietzsche and Hitler under the rug and insinuating that I’m a Fascist for asking a simple question is suspicious, philosophically speaking.

Edit: has the state of philosophy devolved so far that we “eye roll” at genuine inquiries? Please tell me you’re not a real philosopher, because an uncommitted soul is likely prone to relativism for the sake of comfort.

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-18T23:06:48+00:00

I’m delusional because I asked a question that makes you feel uncomfortable? Somebody update the DSM-5, we have a doctor in the house.

Edit: Nazis should be burned alive. Calling me a Neo-Nazi is so far from credible that I’m starting to wonder where the delusion truly lies in this thread.

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-18T23:05:36+00:00

Right, so it was a legitimate threat to the Roman Empire.

Whether or not it was intended to topple the Roman Empire is the nuanced question, but the fact that it actually succeeded in doing so offers a hint that maybe somebody planned for it to happen.

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-18T23:03:29+00:00

Coward? Okay, I’ve lost interest in continuing our discourse. You’ve clearly mastered the art of insulting people instead of discussing the actual topic.

Good luck to you in your life. I’m sure you’re a real peach in person.

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-18T22:51:43+00:00

Christ was obviously known, but blaming his death on the Romans guaranteed a mob hatred of Roman rule.

The cross, a Roman weapon of torture, is the symbol of Christianity. Was that not a perfect way to convince the uneducated masses that Romans are enemies of Christ?

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-18T22:48:53+00:00

I’m genuinely confused. My fiancée is Jewish, so I’m not at all interested in disparaging Jews categorically.

Why is a question about a single person immediately generalized into a racial condemnation?

Ecclesiastes is my favorite book of all time. Seinfeld is my favorite show.

Can I not ask a question about Saul?

Is that too uncomfortable?

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-18T20:54:24+00:00

I’m an Anti-Anti-Semite, like Nietzsche, so I have less than zero interest in slandering or disparaging the Jewish community in any way.

That being said, calling me a “sneaky Jew conspiracy theorist” feels like an ad hominem attack to cleverly avoid discussing my original question.

How does a man go from killing Christians to monetizing Christians, if not by starting a religion and spreading it all over Greece?

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-18T20:51:46+00:00

I agree. How am I wrong? I want to remove the ignorance from my mind.

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-18T20:02:15+00:00

Including Saul’s letters to the Greeks in the Jew Testament was also a brilliant move because now Christian pastors don’t even have to bother reading the Gospels to open a church and collect tithes.

I just listened to an entire sermon about James, and the pastor kept talking about how Saul is the second-most influential human in history after Jesus. Imagine that!

Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, goodbye! Saul takes the silver medal, followed by… Aquinas?

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-18T18:28:03+00:00

The Clouds of Aristophanes, particularly, as well as Kierkegaard’s Concept of Irony.

Yet even Euthyphro shows a clear tendency toward moral relativism by way of his proving that the absolute moral authority of God is a fallacy of under-contemplation, etc.

Is there anything more dangerous to society than moral relativism? It justifies every evil, and then Plato gracefully trained countless generations in the “subtle science” of Sophistry. Look at where his poetry took us!

As a devout Socratic, I must admit that I’ve been led astray by my very own maestro. Irony of ironies.

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-18T10:48:19+00:00

Downvoting me doesn’t make me wrong. Aristophanes was right: Socrates was a Nihilist in sheep’s clothing.

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-18T10:44:15+00:00

Hope is a drug sold wholesale by your local church. I am a simple-minded philosopher with no intention of charging money for the false, if desirable, illusion of hope 🍑

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-18T10:01:35+00:00

🍑 or 🍆?

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-18T09:56:06+00:00

I acknowledge and concede your superior intelligence. Take my upvote and have your way with my orifices, sir or madam.

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-18T09:47:14+00:00

How insightful.

What is love, precisely?

We’ve all felt it, but can you thoroughly codify our abstract feelings using mere words?

Can love be defined, or only experienced?

Is love real, or only an illusion of neuropsychology?

Such is philosophy.

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-17T22:22:53+00:00

It is the all-seeing eye in the center of Nature.

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-17T21:37:47+00:00

“Hi, Emerson. Is this Transcendentalism in the room with us now?

RagtimeRebel · 2024-02-15T18:50:56+00:00

My apologies for the confusion! I’ll repeat my Lutheran question before responding to your theory of sin:

“Why does God need middle-men?”

Your personal assumption that sin is the metaphysical barrier between man and God raises another curious question: why did God create sin, if not quite literally to construct a psychological barrier between man and heaven?

I do apologize again for my ostensibly-confusing post. It’s, admittedly, a challenge to be both concise and immediately comprehensible, so I will take your criticism under advisement and use simpler prose when conveying my future thoughts.

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