Christians Failing To Understand The Basis Of Everything Humans Hold As True And Valuable; Again.

In today's chapter of "Dealing with Christians In Stoicism Groups", ...

We were discussing the toxic and nonsensical nature of Christian religiosity.

Why were we discussing that in a Stoicism group?

For the same reason that always comes up.
Christian fundamentalists can't resist preaching their religion as the one/only truth path to:
a.) moral enlightenment
and
b.) a life worth living.  

They pushed that crap.
We pushed back.
They pushed some more.
And every time they commented,
 things got more bizarre (and stupid). 
 

So then we talked about moral intuitions, personal values, and perceptions of reality.

They asked where I get mine from. 

The Christian Fundamentalists, here, were still trying to claim we need a "God" and a special book for that. 

From there, I replied: 

So I would need to already believe in some literal gods, before I could rationally justify not believing in any?

And I would need to believe in some literal god(s), before I could rationally justify
having any perceptions about what counts as good, bad, true, or bs?

Does that mean a pagan-theist, and a Muslim, and a Jehovah's Witness, and a Mormon, whichever version you ascribe to, and a pantheist
are all equally justified in their mutually-exclusive moral-narratives?

What did the early Stoics base their understandings of what's real, not-real, good, and not-good on?

They didn't use any religious books for that.

They didn't even believe in a literal, personal, nor ego-possessing deity.

Instead, they used terms like "God" and "logos" as abstractions to represent concepts like intelligence, logic and virtue which:
a.) they were awe-struck, humbled, and yet emboldened by,
b.) they were reverent towards,
and
c.) which were perceived as properties of the universe (neither something nor someone which exists outside of the universe)
and
d.) which humans are part of and imbued with.

They didn't even agree with Jews or Christians about what the essential virtues are.
For example, Christianity has, an essential virtue, FAITH in a set of literal claims "as true";
claims which the early Stoics rejected.

Nor did the ~words~ which Stoics used for the virtues
get defined the same way any Abrahamic-religionists wanted to define those words.

That's exactly why the early Stoics didn't adopt Abrahamic-religionist concepts.
Abrahamic stories and values were recognized as nonsense and contrary to the views and values which Stoics recognized as true and valuable.

"Love", "Justice", "Mercy", "Truth", "God", "Logos", etc ... all meant something different to the Stoics than they meant to Abrahamic-religion-ists.

In fact, if you look the virtues up in a dictionary (a book which Christian churches around the world have strategically kept out of their bookstores and pews), ...
you won't find Christianity's ironic definitions of those words in there.

I've already explained this point, in greater detail;
in an early comment [a copy of that commentary can be found here]. 

So the very notion that no one has any rational or consistent basis
for determining what counts as toxic, or bs, or good, or bad, etc
UNLESS they believe in a literal deity who authored some literal stories where "He" defined all those things for us, ...

is nonsense.

And it has no place in a Stoicism group;
a group which exists to discuss:
the ideals of Stoicism ...
which were never based on any of the things which religious fundamentalists think humans need as a basis.

So then, where DO people who don't believe in a literal personal deity 
 get our perceptions and values from?
 
And where are personal-god-theists really getting theirs from?

I'll cover that soon. 
Stay tuned.