Bree
Active Member
according to the bible they will be dead for all eternity never to be heard from again.
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Was Jesus Perfect
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according to the bible they will be dead for all eternity never to be heard from again.
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Question Everything
Organizations are created by followers, all are to blame.
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Question Everything
Good to hear some out there reject all the eternal torment scriptures... that is a good start to rejection of all the other ridiculous writing too.
Given an historical Jesus, and given he was offended by the customs of the Temple and the relation of those customs to the Temple's economic life, if he was going to pick a bone with someone, why wasn't it the relevant Temple authority instead of the traders? If there was fault, it was organizational, not personal, and the scene (if indeed anything like this actually happened) was at best a publicity stunt, not a maneuver capable of altering the practices of the Temple.
But according to the gospels, or at least the first gospel, Mark, Jesus declared his intention to die right at the start. And according to all four gospels, Jesus refused all opportunities to escape, and pursued his intention to the death. For example, after the Last Supper the smart thing would be to get out of Jerusalem on a fast donkey and head straight down the Galilee road without stopping, Nope. His friends couldn't talk him out of it. He manipulated the whole set of events in order to die.
I agree (in terms of my previous para.)
Or, if all are content with the system, it's the interloper who's to blame.
Redemptionsong
Well-Known Member
The Holy Spirit sent by Jesus Christ is specific to faith in Christ. This is not about 'other faiths'. There is, according to scripture, one God and one Messiah.
The one God of scripture provides us with a revelation of both justice and love.
Let's not forget that all mercy has justice as its framework. You cannot have forgiveness of sin without there being a genuine punishment for sin. And forgiveness is pointless if there is no repentance, for without repentance the sinner will continue to sin. Ultimately, forgiveness of the unrepentant would then have the effect of encouraging the sin. This is why God judges us in the end, even when mercy is shown at present.
In the case of the temple traders, Jesus was expressing righteous anger at a holy place becoming a den of thieves. This is not unlike our own bodies/minds becoming the spiritual dwelling place of covetousness and greed. The message is simple - cast them out.
stvdv
Veteran Member: I Share (not Debate) my POV
I could, but I don't play your games. I have no interest in that.
stvdv
Veteran Member: I Share (not Debate) my POV
Of course not. Jesus still is alive, even now. He appeared to me, so this fact I know for sure.
Did you read my argument about how any amount of faith injected into an otherwise critically evaluated situation makes the whole thing wrong? It doesn't matter if 99.9% of the individual additions needed to add a long column of multi-digit numbers are accurate. If there is a single instance of a faith-based addition such as 2 + 2 = 5 is introduced, the answer is wrong. It doesn't matter that some of somebody's thinking is good if it is combined with some that is flawed.
Faith has to be rigidly compartmentalized from critical thought for the latter to be effective. You can believe on Sunday that you can handle poisonous snakes safely, but if you can completely leave that kind of thinking at home before going to your job at the lab or observatory, then you can do science Monday through Friday. But if you let them merge - if your weekday scientific investigations involve religious concepts like a search for irreducible complexity, you're not doing science, and you end up with the worthless results of the intelligent design movement.
Your argument depends on that scripture being meaningful. I disagree with it. Faith and hope are not the same thing. Hope acknowledges that it is just a desire, a preferred outcome, and not necessarily a fact or inevitable. Faith in an idea makes it fact to the faith-based thinker.
Furthermore, faith is not evidence of anything but the willingness to believe without sufficient evidentiary support. The willingness to believe because one wants to is no more of a virtue than sticking a pencil in one's eye because one wants to. Some people might call it bad thinking.
Critical thinking is different. It is not based on desire or a preferred outcome. Reason takes us where it will, sometimes to answers that seem objectionable or counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. With faith-based thought, one just makes it what he wants it to be. The rational skeptic and empiricist is constrained to accept the implications of valid reasoning whatever they are rather than just explain them away because he doesn't like them.
Believing that something is true because you prefer it to be true or are willing to believe is true without reason, which is what faith is, is pretty much the definition of irrational. Irrational more or less means without reason. Faith doesn't require reason, just the will to believe.
Why should others believe what anybody else believes by faith? Most of us don't care what others believe - just what they know and can convincingly demonstrate. Same with Jesus. Whatever he merely believes by faith (or asks us to believe from him by faith) isn't useful to somebody who requires a sound reason to believe anything.
Yes, they are different, but although it seems you are if you don't consider such knowledge actual knowledge, I hope that you are not undervaluing or demeaning knowledge acquired from words - whether read or spoken. Such 'non-actual' knowledge can save one's life.
I'm thinking of the guy on the news a few days ago who refused a vaccine, then developed a severe case of COVID landing him in an ICU on a ventilator for two weeks, where he nearly died, and many times wished he had. Predictably, he is shown on the news advising the other people like him who also can't learn from words, but rather, only by first-hand experience, to heed his words and get a vaccine - a pointless gesture, since they also cannot learn from words, only by direct experience, and won't learn until they get the disease. People that can learn from words that are eligible are already vaccinated, and don't need their advice.
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Question Everything
Did you watch the video? Do you believe that girl was led by God to be in a polygamous marriage? Do you believe God led Heaven's Gate? I do not think you realize what "spiritual" experiences everyone, and I mean everyone has.
I first started realizing what it was after "feeling the spirit" very strongly during a general conference talk by Holland. The talk was later removed because it was fabricated - Holland cried through the story, everyone there was crying and feeling the spirit, and the entire thing was 100% false.... so I guess the spirit does not witness of truth.... Next up, church leaders claimed callings came from God... well, was it God that calls child molesters into leadership positions? Because that is what I found. Everyone raised their hand, confirmed their child molesting leaders were called of God, everyone in the congregation in front of those kids affirming they agreed with the calling.... then there were the "temple recommends" to people who were child molesters. Mike Norton has great videos where he lies through temple recommend interview and the interviewer has no idea they are being lied to "I feel the spirit, here is your recommend" to this actor, who later posts videos inside the temple. The Mormon church bought fabricated forged documents - no discernment at all. Joseph Smith's plagiarism from Adam Clarke's Bible Commentaries for JST "translation" - NOT a "spiritual" translation, it was plagiarism. .... all the time people "feeling the spirit" that Joseph is a "translator" when he copied the work of others. People following and sustaining child molesters in "the name of Christ", believing falsehood after falsehood, giving $$$$ to build great and spacious buildings, $100+billion dollars going not to charity, but to malls ...
I have felt it, I used to think it was from God too - it is different from normal emotions, a really strange thing, but now I know what it is. It is not from God. It does not testify of truth. It does not protect. Humans are from the animal kingdom, and we are heard animals. The "spirit" is a social bonding instinct that is present in all groups - an amazing feeling of elevation to be part of a group, and I think it is great to be close to people, community can be wonderful - but that feeling is NOT from God, it is not "truth".
Everyone leans to their own understanding, everyone leans to their feelings. Other faiths sacrifice much more than Christians do as a result of their "spiritual" feelings. What you discount in others as not being from God you need to also discount in yourself as not being from God.
Did I say the whole world? I did not. I said, "it has permeated Western culture and is the foundation for much of its ethos." Do you disagree with that statement as I worded it? Western culture, is not the whole world.
I agree with this a great deal. I used to think that about Jesus from back when I was in bible college. It says he was tempted in all ways like us, but then they elevate him so highly they sanitize his humanity to the point he's really nothing like us!
I like how Alan Watts put it, "They kicked Jesus upstairs". I much prefer to see Jesus as someone who had to work at it like the rest of us, in his own ways with his own struggles.When we are able to see our own struggles with being balanced, and that is the goal for us, we are able to have compassion for others with their own struggles. Of course we will find those who have become more masterful in doing this, and we can look to them. We help each other through our own life lessons toward finding that center in our lives.
I agree in part with this. To explain, love is love is love. We are either open to it, or closed off to it to varying degrees. A child is by virtue of their innocence, much more open to everything. As we become adults and all that cultural and social programming sets in, we become more apprehensive and guarded to the world. As adults, if we are on any sort of path towards reconnecting with the world, with that joy of childhood innocence, that takes a lot of overcoming that programming. So yes, "except you become as a little child, you can't see the wonder and beauty of life, or "the kingdom of God".
But, assuming that an adult has done that work and "overcome the world", and are "as a little child" again. The depths of understanding of an adult and the depth of understand of a child, are considerably distinguished from each other. Think of it like a series of nested bowls. The smaller bowls hold less volume than the larger bowls. And the smaller bowls all fit within that larger bowl. The larger bowls are simply what happens with maturation. We grow larger, and if we remain open, the volume, or depths of love, will be understood with much greater depth and maturity than that of a five year old. It's all still love, like water in those bowls, but more of it.
So from the mind of a child expressing what love is, it will not be what comes out of the mouth of an adult, even though it's all still love.
What if their death was what was needed to bring about lasting change? Would saving their own lives, in fact itself be morally wrong? If your death meant life to others, would choosing to save your own life instead, because of some black and white rule someone somewhere made about choosing to die being morally wrong, be the wrong moral choice? I don't believe in black and white answers to complex moral questions like that. Do you?
But for argument's sake, Jesus had angels there, yet chose to die instead of essentially unleashing a war against humanity with his angelic host. I think that is kind of what the author had in mind in creating that story that way. The message is, the love of God and Christ is invitational, not forceful. "If a man smite you on the cheek, turn to him the other also."
But he's not the God of war. He's the God of Love.
All those, and being willing to lay your life down for another as a sacrifice of love. That's the ultimate good sacrifice, humanly speaking.
I don't get that impression of Jesus from the gospel's narrative, as if the author intended that be the image you saw. Do you think the author intended to portray Jesus negatively like this, or are you mistaking the gospel as a factual historical record?
Continued because I'm too lazy to self-edit much.
For the child to assume they understand the mature version of it, because they read it in a book, is what is prideful. I hope you're not trying to say what I have been saying is being, "too prideful to actually have an honest conversation with you"? If so, you've missed what I've been saying. If you assume I am a Christian apologist, you'd be in error.
I would rather say that we are beyond questions of is there a God or no God, or "I don't know". There becomes a clarity to be sure, but it is not something that you can put into clearly defined boxes of subject/object dualities like that. It's beyond words and definitions. Things become less clearly defined, and more holistic and interconnected in nature. The question of theism vs. atheism becomes moot. It's not the question anymore. And that is not what agnosticism is. Agnosticism sits in the middle of that question, not transcends the question.
But yes, an integral perspective recognizes that "everyone has a piece of the truth," to quote from the Integral philosopher Ken Wilber here. I think what you are saying, and what I fully agree with here, is best captured by the 13th century Zen monk and poet Ikkyu, "Many paths lead from the foot of the mountain, but at the peak we all gaze at the single bright moon." All our languages and symbols about the transcendent, are simply ways for our minds and spirits to connect to something beyond the words themselves. And that, I think, is what you are trying to say about 'agnosticism"? I just wouldn't call it that, as it's greater than that.
If we were to take this postmodernist perspective, and apply that to Fowler's stages of faith, I'd still put that in Stage 4 faith, the Individuative Reflective stage. Deconstruction is a hallmark of postmodernism, and Stage 4 faith definitely deconstructs the symbols of faith. It's the first stage where one is able to 'decouple' the meaning of the symbol from the symbol itself, which is something the mythic-literal stage and the conventional stage (2 and 3), is unable to do yet. To deny the narrative is literally true, destroys the meaning of the story for them, and hence all their apologetics to defend against that happening. 'Noah's Ark really happened, because if it didn't there is no God!', for instance, something both the mythic-literal believer and neo-atheist tend to think alike on.
But there are stages beyond that, where someone already understands the nature of relativism, and has no problem with that anymore. It's just accepted as the way of things. Mystics through the ages have always differentiated between the Absolute and the Relative. So that's not something terribly new, aside from the level of details it goes into about that. The highest stages understand that Absolute Truth, is not a propositional truth. It can't be defined and dissected. It is "ineffable truth", beyond languaging, beyond comprehension, but not beyond apprehension. You don't have to reason a fire, to know a fire is hot.
This is a good discussion. It's not often I meet someone familiar with these areas of understanding. The relative nature of truth is that everything is perceptions of truth. But the there is more beyond the relative, as we learn to let go of tying truth and meaning to fixed objects and allow Truth to be found in everything, from the lilies of field, to the joy of a child's smile expressing the whole Universe.
While it is good to try to be able to simplify something for the mind of a child, if for no other reason than to show you have mastered an understanding of the subject, which is what Einstein meant here, make no mistake, a child will not understand what Einstein understands. What the child hears in that distilled version, is at best highlights and generalities, not a full mature understanding. There is as a matter of fact a difference between the understanding of children, and the understanding of adults.
For the child to assume they understand the mature version of it, because they read it in a book, is what is prideful. I hope you're not trying to say what I have been saying is being, "too prideful to actually have an honest conversation with you"? If so, you've missed what I've been saying. If you assume I am a Christian apologist, you'd be in error.
I am familiar with many of these developmental models, and I'd challenge a couple of the things you think they are saying here. Rather maybe I'd qualify them better than to just say, 'the highest stages is agnosticism', for example. In fact I'd definitely say that's not true, as we understand the term agnosticism.
I would rather say that we are beyond questions of is there a God or no God, or "I don't know". There becomes a clarity to be sure, but it is not something that you can put into clearly defined boxes of subject/object dualities like that. It's beyond words and definitions. Things become less clearly defined, and more holistic and interconnected in nature. The question of theism vs. atheism becomes moot. It's not the question anymore. And that is not what agnosticism is. Agnosticism sits in the middle of that question, not transcends the question.
But yes, an integral perspective recognizes that "everyone has a piece of the truth," to quote from the Integral philosopher Ken Wilber here. I think what you are saying, and what I fully agree with here, is best captured by the 13th century Zen monk and poet Ikkyu, "Many paths lead from the foot of the mountain, but at the peak we all gaze at the single bright moon." All our languages and symbols about the transcendent, are simply ways for our minds and spirits to connect to something beyond the words themselves. And that, I think, is what you are trying to say about 'agnosticism"? I just wouldn't call it that, as it's greater than that.
Again I agree with this, provisionally. I think what you are describing is what is found at the postmodernist level, or to use the colors of the stages from Spiral Dynamics, the Green vMeme stage. That where an understanding of the relative nature of truths come online, and authority figure and group identifications give way to the individual. All this has truth to it. But it's not the end stage to be sure. What comes after it, "transcends and includes" this understanding, but goes beyond it, according to the developmentalist.
If we were to take this postmodernist perspective, and apply that to Fowler's stages of faith, I'd still put that in Stage 4 faith, the Individuative Reflective stage. Deconstruction is a hallmark of postmodernism, and Stage 4 faith definitely deconstructs the symbols of faith. It's the first stage where one is able to 'decouple' the meaning of the symbol from the symbol itself, which is something the mythic-literal stage and the conventional stage (2 and 3), is unable to do yet. To deny the narrative is literally true, destroys the meaning of the story for them, and hence all their apologetics to defend against that happening. 'Noah's Ark really happened, because if it didn't there is no God!', for instance, something both the mythic-literal believer and neo-atheist tend to think alike on.
But there are stages beyond that, where someone already understands the nature of relativism, and has no problem with that anymore. It's just accepted as the way of things. Mystics through the ages have always differentiated between the Absolute and the Relative. So that's not something terribly new, aside from the level of details it goes into about that. The highest stages understand that Absolute Truth, is not a propositional truth. It can't be defined and dissected. It is "ineffable truth", beyond languaging, beyond comprehension, but not beyond apprehension. You don't have to reason a fire, to know a fire is hot.
I think you and I are probably far more alike than dissimilar. While you hear me draw from the Christian language, you have to take the 'style' in which I am speaking of it. If you are familiar with Fowler's stages, then you could try to hear it as coming from a post-deconstructionist perspective, testing the waters of Stage 5 faith, or the Conjunctive stage. I think that a lot of baby gets tossed out with the bathwater in Stage 4, at least looking at my own experience, and observing that in others as well. Stage 5 is able to see Truth emerge from the relative truths of the system of symbols and language, which are largely culturally informed.
This is a good discussion. It's not often I meet someone familiar with these areas of understanding. The relative nature of truth is that everything is perceptions of truth. But the there is more beyond the relative, as we learn to let go of tying truth and meaning to fixed objects and allow Truth to be found in everything, from the lilies of field, to the joy of a child's smile expressing the whole Universe.
While those are outdated social norms, I don't agree they were morality lessons. In fact, the 1st Paul did in fact teach against slavery. It's the later additions of pseudo-Paul where a stance against slavery was softened. This book here details that: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061430730/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
stvdv
Veteran Member: I Share (not Debate) my POV
I said it specifically in that context about spirituality. So, there was not 1 thought of demeaning knowledge acquired from words
IF a scientist claims "I discovered the ultimate vaccine"
THEN it's just words ... might be true might be not
The moment he provides some evidence
Bookish knowledge becomes actual
And when I take the vaccine and
it works then I know for sure
idea
Question Everything
A lot of "what if's" there. I do not think anyone can save any other person. The ultimate bliss is found in equality of mind and ability, not in eternal debt. There are different types of deaths, old beliefs are killed so that new realities can be experienced, so death of untruths and bad habits are good. Kill what is bad, but protect and let what is good live.
I believe the greatest love comes from living and understanding others, not through death. To be seen clearly, know as we are known, complete understanding and togetherness - love is being together, not death, not separation, that is the opposite of love.
I think the author was influenced by political propaganda which promotes citizens joining the military and killing themselves. Trying to see military service as something honorable is something most of humanity has had to struggle with, but I will stand by my beliefs that killing yourself for something is not the highest love, and not the highest honor. Until humanity can change narratives like this, war will continue, needless deaths will continue, justification of murder will continue.
ok, have to run, wish I had more time! Thanks for your thoughts, I don't mean to be abrasive.... personal history that triggers anger towards some harmful narratives, but then "personal history" is what always starts the deconstruction process right? haha, read ya later!
Why do you think Jesus had pity for them? After all, they wanted to avoid being drowned by going into the pigs and still got drowned. To me it sounds quite ironical and, in a way, they made fools of themselves.
They begged him that he would not command them to go into the abyss.
Luke 8:31
The demons came out from the man, and entered into the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake, and were drowned.
Luke 8:33
I think they got what they deserved and I don’t see pity in that.
The way I worded it didn't mention "saving" them, in the sense of 'eternal debt'. I said, "What if their death was what was needed to bring about lasting change?" Lasting change, or bringing about a greater good, is not the same thing as this whole ransom theology stuff, which I don't agree with.
But to the point about ultimate bliss, I would term that as Enlightenment. In my view, "salvation" and Enlightenment are the same thing. But literalists take the metaphor of 'salvation' and make it into something magical that happens somewhere in the cosmos beyond your view, on some ledger line in some book. I recognize those as metaphors, rather than actual books and whatnot. It's far more something tangible, as you say, like having your eyes and heart opened to Truth, as opposed to the world of illusion of the mind, or Maya.
You quote from one of my favorite verses in the Bible, "Then we shall see face to face, then we shall know even as we are known." That's powerful, and an apt description of Awakening, or the Enlightened mind. Those who think of 'salvation' as something after this life, miss the whole point. Looking to an afterlife, misses Life, right now, here, fully, in the present.
This really confuses me. You really read that story of Jesus not calling his angels down to protect himself from death, as a call to join the military? The whole story in the gospels constantly contrasts Jesus' way, against that of the Zealots, who were military. "Greater love has no man than this; that he lay down his life for another", is hardly the motto of the Marines.
Not sure how you are seeing this. I've never read it like that, even as a novice.Yes, I gather that. We both have histories with this stuff. Alright, take your time. I look forward to further discussions.
Redemptionsong
Well-Known Member
It strikes me that a world of pure reason is a world without a heart.
Tell me, how does your reason explain the origins of the universe? Was it all an accident? Is all life a pointless and purposeless 'flash in the pan'?
When Jesus ministered in Judea two thousand years ago, the words he spoke were matched by the actions he took. There was no hypocrisy in Jesus. He had faith that when he spoke God's word, the word would be fulfilled. When he told the paralytic to walk [Luke 5:24,25] the man found himself able to walk.
Your reasoning cannot explain the power of faith to bring about miracles. Yet, over many centuries these miracles and signs have continued within the circles of the faithful.
Your reasoning cannot explain the regenerative power of love because love does not operate according to the laws of logic.
Is it rational to give your life in order to save the life of another?
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Redemptionsong
Well-Known Member
It sounds to me as if you've had some bad experiences.
One should not be fooled by those whose actions are of the flesh and not the Spirit. The most fundamental principle upon which the Christian faith stands is LOVE.
I have been taught that the actions of the Holy Spirit are always in accordance with scripture and with love. You can't go far wrong when these principles are applied to Church activity and to individual actions within the Church.
The reason that we look to Jesus Christ as the image or countenance of God is that he is perfect and without blemish. Any leader who sets themselves up as the one to be followed is in danger of leading others astray. Honest pastors and leaders will always point the way to Christ, not make themselves the object of adoration.
I'm not advocating pure reason. I'm advocating using reason in place of faith. Both are means of deciding what is true about the world, the value of which is in deciding what course of action will facilitate your tastes, desires, dreams, and emotions. Managing life in a way that facilitates desirable experiences and minimizes the undesirable ones is our primary goal in life, not reasoning. Reasoning is a means to achieve and preserve that goal. Or faith. Take your pick.
I just finished watching a true crime television show about an elderly man that was robbed of his fifteen million dollars by a psychic. He had faith in her honesty. He trusted her by faith rather than evidence. He didn't reason. He didn't seek evidence. And he got fleeced. Once, his emotional status was excellent. He was financially secure, at peace, and living the life of a tree farmer in Oregon who was well-liked by those who knew him.
Now, he's broke, alone, financially insecure, and feeling like an old fool because he made decisions based on faith rather than reason applied to evidence. That's what reason is good for, and why it should always be the method one used to make decisions. But it is not an end. It is the means to an end.
The emotions are a horse, reason the reins. Emotions are the color palette, reason the artist who manipulates the colors and gives them meaning. Reason is the gardener that arranges the landscaping to be beautiful and functional.
Thought serves feeling. Feeling is where we live. Without it, reason cannot serve us. Without feeling, people often want to die, even if the reasoning faculty remains intact. It's useless without feelings to shape.
So no to a world of pure reason, and yes to a world of good experiences thanks to reasoning well.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/psychic-stole-millions-dollars-oregon-timber-heir/story?id=31364199