Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

What I say is of no consequence, unless it is according to the Word of God.

...your barbed-wire biblical purity...

Hey, you can choose the alternative to truth if you want to...but abandoning the truth comes with a price.

Just be sure you know what it is, and that you're fine with paying it.

... never made or induced to make an actual appearance.

Two words: Jesus Christ.

You may not think that's God Incarnate. But He is.

You'll find out.

But I see your mind's made up, so...is there anything else I can do for you, or are we done?

[Dubious]

What I say is of no consequence, unless it is according to the Word of God.

...your barbed-wire biblical purity...

Hey, you can choose the alternative to truth if you want to...but abandoning the truth comes with a price.

Just be sure you know what it is, and that you're fine with paying it.

... never made or induced to make an actual appearance.

Two words: Jesus Christ.

You may not think that's God Incarnate. But He is.

You'll find out.

But I see your mind's made up, so...is there anything else I can do for you, or are we done?

Since the bible has so obviously barbecued your brains, it seems you're more done than I am!

[Dontaskme]

Two words: Jesus Christ.

You may not think that's God Incarnate. But He is.

You'll find out.

No need to find out. It's already blindingly self-evident that the image of god, aka the 'imageless' exists in the physical appearance that is known as the human called Jesus Christ. You've already told us this story that god's image looks like the man Jesus.

So what is there to find out, we already know.

We get it, we're the children of our father..aka the image of the imageless.

Breaking news...we do not need to keep going back in time, strolling through some history book ...to know that we are human. We know we are human right here and now. And because Jesus the human knew the truth...then so do all humans, every single one of us, I mean if Jesus knows ..then we all know...else where the fuck in hell did Jesus get the truth from?
So no worries about not knowing ..eh!

So why don't you just get off your self-righteous high-horse pedestal and stop preaching down at us as if we were born yesterday...also I think maybe it's time to book your megaphone in for it's m.o.t monthly service..or maybe get a new one, it must be wearing out and past it's sell by date by now, you use it that often.

Thanks for not reading...you ignorant, arrogant, condescending, patronising, narcissist.

[Alexis Jacobi]

A modern philosophy forum has as its goal to argue fragments of truth. Yet my concern is how to join those needing to sacrifice the joy of arguing opinions for the sake of experiencing the purpose of our universe and Man within it. Simone Weil is an example of such a need. She cannot be classified since she is beyond classification.

At one time I was a nihilist and my life was saved because of humor. When I was free to laugh at absurdity, it made life tolerable and as a musician, it kept me going. I needed help so I began to meditate on reproductions of the art work I was a part of. Then one day I had my inner ass kicked. I discovered G.I. Gurdjieff. I quickly verified why I knew nothing and rather than being offended felt gratitude. Now my questions such as art, the uses of sex energy, Man's conscious potential began to make sense within a conscious universe. I don't discuss these things on the internet since ideas dealing with relative wholeness or levels of reality are disruptive and create negativity. A person can inwardly hurt another by adding negativity to the sacred. But I learn by rejection. Why does Man live in Plato's Cave and is there a way out?

Yes, it would seem that the central thing to focus on is just that: fragmentation. Once, 'the world' and our place in it was understood. The worldpicture made sense and in this sense we could agree. But that view of a holistic world was overturned. I suppose that most everyone understands that this happened. But at the same time I think that most people do not devote themselves to the study of how it happened. Nor how the results unfolded.

What interests me, or one thing among many, is how it happens that people end up *arguing*, as you say, with such adamancy yet without realizing that they have been propelled into argument by previous events and shifts which, effectively, they do not understand.

Once we recognize that we are in a time, an epoch, that is suffering fragmentation (the falling away from the possibility of making definitive statements grounded in a metaphysics that we believe and know is *absolutely certain* and *true*), then we face a choice. If I have understood well enough what you try to express it is, I think, that you understand that there is a way and a means to *recover* from the fragmentation that is part-and-parcel of the outer world, through an inner return. And this is, I think it fair to say, a sort of mystical relationship. (I am unsure what other world to use to describe it).

One thing I will say is that I perceive that history turns in strange circles. We seem to be in a cycle or octave that corresponds to those first decades of the 20th century. It is not in any sense 'the same' but many similar elements come to the surface. To illustrate I will mention the intellectual ferment of the European intellectual world in the 10s and 20s in which 'Bohemians' and 'intellectuals' felt compelled to turn against the too tight structures out of which they were formed. It was their perception that something had to shift and their (psychic and spiritual) life depended on it. Yet the way that this turning-against was carried out involved struggle, sorrow, pain and so much associated with social revolution. I am thinking of the cultural milieu prior to and after WW1. Consider the entire *world* of intellect and art (and psychology) that is revealed in H. Hesse's Steppenwolf.

To contextualize what we are talking about within this thread and to relate it to what we are talking about here, it is that many of us cannot fit ourselves back into the 'former system' which, as I understand it, was a comprehensible picture of what the world is and what we are to do, and not to do, in it. Around us, of course, are people in the culture who struggle mightily to return to the former structures and to get back onto a base that makes sense to them. Here for example I refer to the trend toward religious conservatism in the US. The basic loss of an understood and agreed-upon metaphysical base opens up into extremely strange and dangerous world of social and political conflict.

Thus I would say that as an 'octave' in which one historical period shows itself again reflected in another the view that we are in a similar period as that of the Interwar (1920-1940s) is a useful idea to work with. But here I am of course referring to social upheaval, politics, the threat of war, civil strife, the upset of conventions, whereas you are speaking about the possibility of living in a space that is non-susceptible to all the extremes of mutability.

[Immanuel Can]

But I see your mind's made up, so...is there anything else I can do for you, or are we done?

Since the bible has so obviously barbecued your brains, it seems you're more done than I am!

So, "no," then. Okay.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I did that. I even quoted the passage where I did that, in my last message.

What I did was to describe, in reduced form, what are the central tenets of Christianity. You seemed to have indicated that I was not reciting it correctly and yet, beyond any doubt, I most certainly recite it correctly. Because I understand it.

So your question should be "What is your point?!"

What Dubious wrote interests me:

What you [IC] say is of no consequence having a mind that never travels beyond your barbed-wire biblical purity, maintaining its absolute confidence and obedience to all the camp commander's injunctions so as not to forfeit salvation. Your belief in Jesus resembles a theological concentration camp where it is written anyone who seeks to investigate the horizon beyond will result in the execution of one's expected after-life.

Despite appearances I am not interested in provoking or stimulating ideological conflict just for the sake of the sparks it produces. What interests me is 'accurately seeing the situation we are in'. So as a philosophical effort, and as a sociological effort, this can be dovetailed with what is possible on a philosophical forum of discursive thought.

So I think that what you represent here, and the way you can and should be looked at and understood, is as a person who is trying with all your psychic force to hold to an absolute position within an absolutist religious philosophy. Obviously, this involves having and holding to a set of absolute metaphysical definitions. Without them the system fails. So (obviously) every tenet is like a brick that comprises an edifice. Pull out one brick, or modify the sense and implication of one brick-tenet, and the entire system is threatened.

My view is, obviously, that the System you describe is clearly and indubitably merely a Picture, but that the picture is not the *reality*. What is the *reality* then? No matter how we look at it, no matter where we stand in relation to *it*, the Reality is Existence and Being.

So I go along with you when you describe that Existence and Being must have a divine origin. But Heaven only knows what sort of intelligence has set all this in motion! To put one's mind to the task of speculation on what cannot even be conceived -- how Existence came to be and what Being in existence means -- is I think beyond the mind's ability. And yet this is what we have done (humankind I mean) and there is no way around doing that.

Once one has 'disturbed the arrangement of the bricks', and once *the wall* loses its structural integrity, and then when the bricks fall and are scattered on the ground -- what then? Is everything lost? Is Man lost?

The answer, curiously, will disturb you. The answer is that when faced with the disruption of perceptual and ideological systems Man must turn back to his own self. There is no other option really. You cannot abide with this idea because, as you often say, God in your picture is there outside of you and pictured as an Absolute and a 'will' to which you are certain you must submit, and indeed are submitted to.

So you have no other choice but to interpret *return to self* as a turn away from the Absolute and, by implication, into a project of rebellion against *God*. Any path, and modification of the rigorous Christian path that you define encompasses 'rebellion' and in this sense brings those rebels into 'the Devil's territory'. So what I say is that we simply need to see 1) that this is so and 2) that we face a choice as to how we will relate to this.



This is an image that came up when I searched with the word Abraxas. I mean it, at least a little bit, like an ironic joke since in Hesse's novel Demian the idea of a God which encompasses all aspects of being becomes necessary for those who can no longer reside (comfortably) within the former binary system. And that system is, it is fair to say, Manichaean. ["To be Manichean is to follow the philosophy of Manichaeism, which is an old religion that breaks everything down into good or evil. It also means “duality,” so if your thinking is Manichean, you see things in black and white."]

So whether it is right or wrong or good or bad -- (it seems to encompass both!) -- people have ventured forth from the previous, confining, system (what Dubious describes as being a system enclosed by barbed-wire) into a world of different dimensions.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The answer, curiously, will disturb you. The answer is that when faced with the disruption of perceptual and ideological systems Man must turn back to his own self. There is no other option really. You cannot abide with this idea because, as you often say, God in your picture is there outside of you and pictured as an Absolute and a 'will' to which you are certain you must submit, and indeed are submitted to. Accept what God offers you and 'live', refuse it and 'die'. Pretty terribly binary [and Manichaean].

One additional comment. Some pages back, though I am sure you paid no attention, I brought up the idea of being a Slave of God and contrasted it with being a Partner with God. The Judaic notion is that man is a lowly worm who must submit to an All-Powerful Deity who demands absolute obedience.

But contrasted to that is the idea of God in which man is God's partner. If God is man's partner and man God's partner this leaves open the intellectual field where man can think about God, existence, being, and all other things with a degree of freedom.

But if man is God's slave then man must think only what God allows.

We must see, therefore, that human freedom -- the declaration of freedom, the possibility and responsibility of freedom -- is deeply problematic. What constrains men therefore? Social laws, laws of convention, rules and regulation, limitations, etc. There is no religious structure that I am aware of that does not define parameters. And these comprise our paideia. What we teach to children -- our own children.

But we live in a time where, for good or for evil (and likely both), people have abandoned the former systems of constraint and regulation. This opens into wildly conflictual territories.

Again, one has to *put this out on the table* for examination. I am not making it so because I here recite it. It has become so and it is so.

So responsible people have to make responsible and adult decisions about what parameters and restrictions they accept, and which they do not. And obviously this applies within the domain that you inhabit and manage.

[Immanuel Can]

I did that. I even quoted the passage where I did that, in my last message.

What I did was to describe, in reduced form, what are the central tenets of Christianity.

Not in your original message.

What you did there is tell a rather weird sort of pseudo-Genesis account, and then ask if it was all good with me.

But it was wrong. And any point being made out of such an errant account was also bound to be wrong. So it seemed obvious to me that the thing to do was to point out to you the four major areas of difference between your account and Genesis...which you can go and see for yourself...so you could get your launch-point right before you made any conclusions.

But if you want to go back to your own pseudo-Genesis, and launch from there, well, you've lost not only me but all knowledgeable Christians from the get-go. Your argument won't even get off the ground with anybody who knows Genesis.

In short, I'm doing you a favour by pointing out the errors. I'm not picking on you. I'm trying to help your argument be sound.

Despite appearances I am not interested in provoking or stimulating ideological conflict just for the sake of the sparks it produces.

That's great. I have no problem with that.

But let's get the basic facts right, before we begin. And the two most salient facts so far are these: first, as I said repeatedly, the definition of "Christian" with which you've been trying to work is badly formed, and secondly, you're not reproducing Genesis correctly in your account of it.

So I think that what you represent here...as a person who is trying ...etc.

You're familiar with the ad hominem error, I trust? This is an example.

It's really irrelevant what "I am." What's relevant is the truth or falsehood of the things I've been saying -- which is perfectly relevant to contest, of course.

I understand the impulse to "shoot the messenger." But the question is really only this: is the message according to Scripture? If it is, then all bullets miss. I'm just the guy who's telling you a truth you don't want to hear. But cavilling with me won't change the message. The message is what counts.

My view is, obviously, that the System you describe

I have no "system."

I've simply been quoting Scripture, showing you that it says what I have said it says. That's it.

So I go along with you when you describe that Existence and Being must have a divine origin. But Heaven only knows what sort of intelligence has set all this in motion!

You're right. Heaven does know.

What you say only rhetorically, I assert as fact.

But the real question is, "Has heaven said?"

The answer, curiously, will disturb you.

I have to say, I doubt it. But carry on.

The answer is that when faced with the disruption of perceptual and ideological systems Man must turn back to his own self.

No, I'm not "disturbed." But if man turns back to his own dark heart, he will find only darkness.

That way is merely a counsel of futility and despair.

God in your picture is there outside of you and pictured as an Absolute and a 'will' to which you are certain you must submit,

I'm not Islamic, nor am I a Calvinist. So no, I don't believe any such thing.

"Submission" is the Islamic ideal. It has nothing to do with Christianity. The counterpart in Christianity is "sonship" -- quite a different kind of relationship. But you won't get this, I know, anymore than Nicodemus was able to fathom what Jesus was saying in John 3. Because "unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." The person who does not know God cannot understand the things apparent to the person who has; but the person who is born again DOES understand the other perspective -- because that is the perspective from which he himself has come, a perspective he himself once experienced and lived.

So honestly, I 'get' where you're coming from. I see it, understand it, and know what it is to 'be there' in one's thinking. But I can see you don't get where I'm speaking from, even when you imagine you do. You get it wrong, every time you try to identify it.

So you have no other choice...

Heh. Nope. You've got it wrong again there. We've got a very important "other choice."

Man is not our option. Nor is "self" a place to turn. Faith in God is what we need.

And if you're honest with yourself, you'll see the simple sense of this. No man has the ability to understand God...you've said so yourself. But God has the ability to reveal His will and identity to man. That's what Romans asserts.

So there are two types of people: those who do what you're suggesting, and turn to the blind self or to Satanic nihilism, and those who turn toward God.

I'm encouraging you to opt for the latter course. I would rather see you turn to God than to the confusion of the heart of mankind, or to the unreadable guesses of human historicism, or to Nihilism and misery.

Forgive me my temerity, in wishing for you better than you propose.

[Alexis Jacobi]

In short, I'm doing you a favour by pointing out the errors. I'm not picking on you. I'm trying to help your argument be sound.

My view of the story presented through Genesis is, and certainly was, completely precise. You object to certain turns of phrase. For example when I used 'spinning sword' to describe "a flaming sword which turned every way". It is, to any reasonable person, the same thing. But what you do is to focus on an inane, irrelevant difference, and blow it up into something you believe (in your performance) that you can argue against.

What I presented -- the reduced version -- was accurate in essence. So with this:

But let's get the basic facts right, before we begin. And the two most salient facts so far are these: first, as I said repeatedly, the definition of "Christian" with which you've been trying to work is badly formed, and secondly, you're not reproducing Genesis correctly in your account of it.

You are working a dishonest angle.

AJ wrote: So I think that what you represent here...as a person who is trying ...

IC wrote: You're familiar with the ad hominem error, I trust? This is an example.

I refer to you as a generality. You embody and express a certain, solidified, doctrinal view of Christianity. In this sense you-as-person are here to preach and admonish. Nothing ad hominem about that.

What's relevant is the truth or falsehood of the things I've been saying -- which is perfectly relevant to contest, of course.

The truth is that, for example, the Genesis story expresses what became a base of Christian conception in a cosmological, cosmogonical sense. So in that I have no argument against either it or you. I think that you do explain this system relatively faithfully.

But as I tell you I regard what is expressed in Genesis as a story that has an allegorical, not a literal, meaning. No part of it can be taken as you take it -- at face value and literally. That you do take it that way, and that you are here enforcing this view, has to be looked at as an act of your will. So again in this sense your *will* cannot be excluded from the on-going conversation. Nor can (or should) mine or anyone else's.

I understand the impulse to "shoot the messenger." But the question is really only this: is the message according to Scripture? If it is, then all bullets miss. I'm just the guy who's telling you a truth you don't want to hear. But cavilling with me won't change the message. The message is what counts.

There are numerous levels here. One is that as one who comes forward with a sort of 'policed ideological viewpoint' (the barbed-wire system you operate in) you will, necessarily, arouse reaction in those who have lived out a need to break out of those constraints. They will react to you, and of course they do. That is one side.

There certainly are 'messages in Scripture', of that there is no doubt. And that Scripture was written by, and managed by, and also interpreted by the men who held those views and who managed and wielded the ideas. This is where you will show your most constrained parameter of thinking. You will say *This is God's word!* Do I reject this idea? No, I modify the idea. I do not regard any part of the Bible as necessarily *authoritative* in the way that Christians take that to mean. It has all been collated and organized by men. But what about the *inspiration* and what about the revelatory element? That is especially where I focus attention! What is 'revealed' is revealed inside ourselves. There is no 'external revelation'.

I know how your mind works! "All bullets miss" is a wonderful way to put it. You have an unassailable position. You present yourself and your position (these function together) as unassailable.

The message is what counts.

I view 'the message' as counting very much. But the message, ultimately, stands beyond any concretization of it. Stories reveal 'messages' but the story is not the message, rather it is the vehicle. You stumble over this one as a bona fide literalist. And you will stumble forever. You can't break out of this (rigid) hermeneutic.

I have no "system."

Oh yes you do. You operate within that System.

I've simply been quoting Scripture...

Christianity, as a belief system, is the System I refer to.

But if man turns back to his own dark heart, he will find only darkness.

And here is a primary Christian tenet: the sheer corruption of the human heart, the human mind. So it certainly follows, just as I said, that anyone who speaks of 'self' or 'returning to self' will to you mean, essentially, return to the domain of darkness, error and of course Satanic power.

And this is why I say that in your system man is a worm. His only right, according to you, is to become a slave of God.

But there are alternatives to this harsh view. They also involve metaphysics. Such as 'the self' (Atman) being the source of knowledge, goodness, awareness, consciousness, etc. These ideas are anathema to you. And for this reason to say you lived within barbed-wire constraints . . . is not inaccurate.

I'm not Islamic, nor am I a Calvinist. So no, I don't believe any such thing.

Here, I'd say you are irredeemably dishonest . . . with yourself!

The counterpart in Christianity is "sonship".

This is certainly better than a pure slavish relationship. And yet it too is different, substantially, from a partner-relationship. I do not have a problem with the notion of sonship within Christianity (or Judaism). I do not have a problem necessarily with examining Absolutist ethical systems either. I simply want to point out dynamics of relationship.

So honestly, I 'get' where you're coming from. I see it, understand it, and know what it is to 'be there' in one's thinking.

No, I do not think you do. You may sort of get it though.

Man is not our option. Nor is "self" a place to turn. Faith in God is what we need.

You return here where you will always return, to the initial and the core definition. And you can do this because, for you, God is literally a *thing outside yourself*, like a cosmic server in God's cloud. Because you conceive it in this way, there is no other way for you to view the question (of relationship, location, etc.).

But God has the ability to reveal His will and identity to man.

Yes, within man's own self. But I do not deny that *scripture* is the written form of those men who have had the inner revelation.

I'm encouraging you to opt for the latter course. I would rather see you turn to God than to the confusion of the heart of mankind, or to the unreadable guesses of human historicism, or to Nihilism and misery.

Yes, but your *preaching effort* offers to me a restraint and a constriction that is not sufficiently ample. Therefore what I present to you is a way to make it more ample. But where I go you cannot go. And the metaphor of a barbed-wire encampment comes up again as a result. And what you say here is a somewhat more generous iteration of the *Believe what I tell you or soon you'll find yourself in Hell" shtick.

Within the adamancy of your position -- a perceptual system -- you have no alternative except to put things in these terms. And I understand this.

[Immanuel Can]

In short, I'm doing you a favour by pointing out the errors. I'm not picking on you. I'm trying to help your argument be sound.

My view of the story presented through Genesis is, and certainly was, completely precise. You object to certain turns of phrase.

No. That's not so.

Go back to the quotation I gave you two messages or so ago: you'll find at least four ways in which your summary of Genesis was wrong.

I'm surprised you haven't said anything about any of them. All you would have to do is provide the scriptural reference for something like "man falling to Earth," and you'd prove me wrong.

Why didn't you try?

IC wrote: You're familiar with the ad hominem error, I trust? This is an example.

I refer to you as a generality.

It's still ad hominem, and still a fallacy.

If the messenger is one man, it's his message that counts. Let the messenger be a group, and the same is true. Either way, a rational person must deal with the message, not the messenger(s).

But as I tell you I regard what is expressed in Genesis as a story that has an allegorical, not a literal, meaning.

Yep, that's what you think. I know that.

But so?

There certainly are 'messages in Scripture', of that there is no doubt.

Great.

Time to deal with them.

What is 'revealed' is revealed inside ourselves. There is no 'external revelation'.

Yep, I know you think this, too.

I just doesn't happen to be true. But yeah, you can think it.

I know how your mind works!

Not a clue, apparently.

I'm speaking strictly about what makes logical, rational sense, and has to do with the message. You're still trying to pick at the messenger, under the delusion that that is going to diffuse the message.

That that is wrong ought to be manifest to you. That it is not, is surprising.

I've simply been quoting Scripture...

Christianity, as a belief system, is the System I refer to.

Well, you don't even know what Christianity is. You've told me so already. You think it's a broad cultural construct of Catholicism and Westernism, one devoid of Scriptural particulars, and one that you're going to revive in order to save civilization.

Good luck with that.

But if man turns back to his own dark heart, he will find only darkness.

And here is a primary Christian tenet: the sheer corruption of the human heart, the human mind.

It's beyond that, even.

Even were the human mind not corrupt (which, in some ways, it certainly is), a finite creature is not capable of finding his own way to total knowledge of the Infinite God. Seventy five years or so, plus a brain the size of a softball, is not sufficient space. You may as well speak of containing the ocean in a paper cup...it would actually be easier.

And this is why I say that in your system man is a worm. His only right, according to you, is to become a slave of God.

This is your own wording. I've neither said nor implied anything like it.

Again, I encourage you to quote, not to make up stuff and try to put it in my mouth. Instead, ask me IF I think man is a "worm" (no, that's hyperbole), or if I think that the relationship of man to God is best described as "slave" (I do not).

I'm not Islamic, nor am I a Calvinist. So no, I don't believe any such thing.

Here, I'd say you are irredeemably dishonest . . . with yourself!

Hilarious. So I'm an Islamist-Calvinist, and don't know it, you think?

So funny.

Man is not our option. Nor is "self" a place to turn. Faith in God is what we need.

You return here where you will always return, to the initial and the core definition.[/quote]
To the truth, you mean? To what Scripture actually says, and not what it doesn't?

Thank you. Yes, I will.

But God has the ability to reveal His will and identity to man.

Yes, within man's own self.

God sets the terms.

Those are not the terms.

I'm encouraging you to opt for the latter course. I would rather see you turn to God than to the confusion of the heart of mankind, or to the unreadable guesses of human historicism, or to Nihilism and misery.

Yes, but your *preaching effort* offers to me a restraint and a constriction that is not sufficiently ample.

Now you remind me of the Miltonic, "I will not serve."

Yes, you will. You will serve your own urges and impulses, or you will serve God. But you will serve. Everybody does.

You think intellection offers freedom. But I have played that game, and I understand it throughly. You will not know God while you remain self-confident and refuse to humble yourself. God does not reward arrogance.

Look at his declarations to the Pharisees and Sadducees, the most learned and theological men of His day. Did He bow to them? Did He honour their intellectual achievements? No, He indicted them as hypocrites and preening fools, for whom a greater judgment awaited because of their arrogance and their abuse of others.

Intellect is no insulation against sin. It's just an opportunity for more. (Anybody with familiarity with university politics will say "Amen" to that!)

But where I go you cannot go.

Where you are, I have been. You have no idea.

But can you ever say you have known God?

[Dontaskme]

There certainly are 'messages in Scripture', of that there is no doubt. And that Scripture was written by, and managed by, and also interpreted by the men who held those views and who managed and wielded the ideas. This is where you will show your most constrained parameter of thinking. You will say *This is God's word!* Do I reject this idea? No, I modify the idea. I do not regard any part of the Bible as necessarily *authoritative* in the way that Christians take that to mean. It has all been collated and organized by men.

The christian bible is not gods word. Gods word came to Abraham in a vision before the scriptures were even written or so the story goes. Not sure what voice Abraham was listening to but logic and intelligence all point to his own voice.

John says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and with-out Him nothing was made that was made.”

However, the bible was not with god in the beginning and the bible is not god. The bible did not create the world. The bible was not even in existence at the creation of the world which is unknowable by mortal man. Where was gods bible during the millions and millions of years the dinosaurs spent roaming the earth? The bible was indeed written by men and the messages were none other than auditory illusions of light and sound heard as words that became symbols in the form of scripture aka recorded stories of human experience.

Language came through to man via the evolutionary chain of events where people started listening to both their own and other peoples capacity to speak and their ears would translate the sound waves into neural signals that are then processed and interpreted by various parts of the brain, starting with the auditory cortex. From this scientific evidence it can be seen that the story of my life stuck to me like glue since there was no way I could separate myself from my story.

There was never any evidence to suggest there was ever a beginning of god that can be known by man - and since man wrote the bible the bible could not have been gods word - or god himself. If the bible was god and his word then the beginning of god would have been when the christian bible was first published. So it's all a bit silly really.

It's no wonder intelligent evolved human beings flushed the whole story down the toilet where it truely belonged. I just think the world would be a lot more sane, well adjusted, together in true brotherhood, happier and more adept and organised with their own lives as they directly experience it as and through the natural law of cause and effect...if religion did not exist.

But it seems religious humans have never been able to accept their true raw natural nature, that they are just another animal.

God is just another word for everything, and everything is just another word for infinity.

What do you think?




.

[Dubious]

Far more reasonable assumptions.

It often looks as if god is more in need of salvation from humans than we are from IT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpn-NhSPYQE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suvkwNYSQo

[promethean75]

That second video was off the hook. Lol. Stephen Fry interrogates god when he arrives at the pearly gates.

[Nick_A]

Genesis invites us to open to noesis, a higher form of reason than our usual dualistic associative thought. For example, what is so wrong about having knowledge of good and evil. Isn't this what the Christ awakens us to?

Notice how Eve misunderstands the serpent. Is there more to this than meets the eye? What is the difference between God and LORD God?

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

"2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

Eve said we may not touch it. Eating and touching. Do you sense a difference?

Genesis 3: 21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

What was the quality of being Adam and Eve had before Receiving SKIN? Does the fall of Man also refer to the devolution of one quality of being into a lower?

[Dontaskme]

Far more reasonable assumptions.

It often looks as if god is more in need of salvation from humans than we are from IT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpn-NhSPYQE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suvkwNYSQo

thanks for the on point videos. . very good watch.

Truth is...For every single individual human life form who in one instance ( never existed ) and the next instance ( was born into existence ) and then went on to live for whatever duration of time it was meant to live...and then dies. Well that duration of time one is spent alive until death...is the only( living experience ) that (one) can know, or be ever known about life.

Think about that...all that can be known about reality is ones own personal duration of time spent being alive. Also bearing in mind that every one who was ever born started their life as a baby. So we all started life knowing absolutely zero about nothing and anything ...much like every other creature who lives, from a simple flatworm to a human being. Nothing really knows anything.. So what I am trying to say is that..we can only know (our own unique personal life span) whether it be 3 years or 95 years duration...the entire duration however long it lasts is the only experience we will know about reality...everything else would be just someone's elses experience...NOT our own...we can only experience our own (life span) never any one elses experience.

In other words...it's absolutely pointless, useless and idiotic to think we could ever know anything beyond the reach of our own allotted life span of living experience.

Also, think about the happenstance that was your own birth...surely the odds against you ever existing is billions to one anyway. .so again, it's hardly worth believing that life ever had a reason or purpose to be. I've personally had a naturally occuring miscarriage.. I decided to place my potential baby in a test-tube, so I could get a look at it, and ponder it's utter fragility.. before flushing it down the toilet. Just think..that potential life form will never exist now...that to me is the weirdness of reality...in that it is a total mystery and always will be.

Human beings simply cannot handle the MYSTERY...and is why they make up any ridiculous story they can possibly think of to justify their existence..which to me, is utterly pointless.


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