Would only an evil god blame his own creations for the taint therein -- of his poor craftsmanship?

I think this verse clarifies the need to distinguish between material and spiritual meanings:


Nicodemus had trouble understanding the meaning of 'birth' as referring to something other than literal (material) birth, but when you understand that the spiritual level corresponds with material experiences in a way that allows materially-oriented language to express spiritual concepts, then you can begin to go beyond the simple distinction allegory/literal.

No , no my friend, you can't put words in my mouth. I made no such claim.
OTOH, YOU are inextricably tied to that literal claim of 'Science'.

Quote: I call Christianity an immoral religion as it posits that a genocidal prick can somehow be a good god and that homophobic and misogynous teachings are moral.

Regards
DL

Dude! I'm sorry, this is obviously personal for you, as it is for me.

What happened to you?

This has been Greatest I am's MO since arriving. He uses insulting language to get a reaction.

He's not even attempting to educate people about Gnosticism despite claiming to be Gnostic himself.

The book I recommended on Gnosticism is very good, and written by people who aren't aspiring cult leaders and don't have any axes to grind.

It sure sounds like you're using the fact of our existence as proof of something; a god, perhaps?

Nope, just pointing out the absurdity of your alternative explanation.

You didn’t get that?

Greatest I Am said:
Leadfoot said:

Go ahead and explain what you were trying to convey there.

******* sarcasm Glennn

Well, as long as you understand that there is not a god with expectations of you, and rewards for those who live up to those expectations . . .

Sounds like you are happy with the rocks, water and sunlight recipe for life.

Expectations and consequences is how humans interpret natural patterns that affect their lives.

If you farm, for example, nature expects you to plant seeds at the appropriate planting times and harvest them appropriately, process and store the food properly, etc. or else the food will go to waste or never grow in the first place.

You can reject the rhetorical language of "God" or "gods" having expectations and insist that a good harvest is not a "reward" for good agricultural behavior; or that hunger is not a "punishment" for crop failure; but there is technically no reason those same words can't be applied to nature using a personified image of God or "gods" as they can to situations where one or more humans punish/reward each other for behaviors and outcomes.

Some beings are human while other beings are non-human. Some non-human beings are animals and thus recognizable to humans as having similar physical traits, such as eyes, noses, mouths, digestive systems, appendages, etc.

Other non-human life is more different from humans than animals. Trees and plants, for example, don't have active musculature or digestive systems, etc. They are combinations of liquid/solid matter with identifiable form, visually, and identifiable chemical functions that allow us to note whether they are alive or dead.

There may be still other forms of life that are even more difficult for us to recognize as living/dying beings, but whose functions interact in the grander scheme of the universe. Throughout all such living patterns, including those that we can see and identify as life, you could say there are 'spirits,' or patterns occurring within all those other living tissues that influence their operation and how they interact with others.

Ultimately the universe is extremely complex and there are all sorts of patterns/spirits of interaction occurring throughout. Referring to a power and knowledge in a generalized way by thinking/talking in terms of "God," is just a short-hand to avoid having to think about all the myriad details every time you want to say something general about a complex pattern of occurrences.

So if it is all spiritual talk, allegory IOWs, there was no real A & E or talking serpent. Right?

Regards
DL

I need to pay back for all that the church did to help me when young.

I owe them the truth and that is why I try to correct it's immoral thinking and adoration of a genocidal and infanticidal prick.

Are you doing the same? If not, why not?

Regards
DL

Me too, kind of. Religion almost fucked me out of ever figuring this life out. And just about everyone else too.

It was foretold that eventually, evil would start to look like an Angel of Light. I didn't see how that was possible for a long time, but I do now. What better disguise for evil to take in order to deceive.

We have no way of knowing what exactly was meant when these scriptures were written, because they were written in a time before materialism was radically distinguished from other modes of thinking.

So, for example, let's say you tell your friend that your boss is a 'snake,' and your friend understands what you mean by that. Can you then say that there is no actual 'snake' running your place of employment? Only if what you mean by 'actual snake' is the species of reptile. If what you mean refers to the type of person who can be referred to as a 'snake,' then it is more accurate to refer to boss as a snake than as a human, because 'human' only refers to his classification as a biological species, which would be irrelevant information in your story. I.e. you wouldn't tell your friend, "my boss is a human," because that wouldn't explain what you're trying to convey in talking about your boss.

Materialism is obsessed with forcing everyone to think and talk only in a certain way and avoid talking about subtler patterns that actually say more than the gross material ones. Yes, there are certain genetic and evolutionary reasons your boss is a human and not a reptile, but insisting that the word, 'snake' should only be used to refer to reptiles of that species is materialist nonsense; just as it would be materialist nonsense to insist that 'reborn' must refer to going back into your mother's womb to be borne again out of her physical body.

If you want to get any value out of reading religious texts and many other texts, you have to learn to read in a way that deciphers a relevant meaning, instead of arguing against them because they don't fit your materialist standards of what it would mean for A&E or the serpent to be 'real.'

Everything that exists and happens is 'real.' If your boss is a 'snake,' that is real. You can complain that all metaphors should be written as similes and otherwise they are lies, but that's just not the truth. Metaphors can be true or false based on how the target and source of the metaphor fit in terms of meaning, and not just false because a human can't be a snake in the biological sense, or vice versa.

Ultimately we are spirits inhabiting bodies. So when you describe a person as a 'snake,' it doesn't really mean that a human body is a snake, because the human body is just a vehicle for the soul and mind of the person. So if the behavior of the spirit is snake-like, then the spirit is a snake - just as the spirit inhabiting a snake's body is snake-like in that it slithers on its belly, sneaks in and out of places, etc. It just so happens that being in that body causes the snake's spirit to behave as it does; whereas with humans we have a little more freedom to decide whether to behave like a snake or in a more upright way, so to speak.

I'm speaking to the belief that there is a post-life reward granted by the god for those who live up to its expectations.

It is a big theological/philosophical question to wonder what exactly the "hereafter" entails and how it works.

First, you have to address the issue of whether consciousness ends permanently when the body dies or whether it continues on in some way.

If you can completely convince yourself that it ends when the body dies, then you can try to get away with all sorts of things that cause negative consequences and then try to die before reaping those consequences.

If, however, you consider that consciousness is a fundamentally immutable aspect of reality that can't be destroyed and only changes form, like energy, then you are tasked with figuring out the patterns through which consciousness migrates and whether it can permanently avoid the consequences caused by the actions of its previous forms, or whether it will ultimately have to face those consequences.

Religions that believe in reincarnation make it easier for the materialistic mind to contemplate the hereafter as a direct continuation of the present world. The soul simply transfers from one form to the next by being reborn, and as a result it must experience the effects of others' actions, which were in turn influenced by actions of its past incarnations.

Religions that believe in 'heaven' and 'hell' and 'purgatory' as spiritual afterlife states are more difficult to grasp from a materialist perspective because they don't make direct reference to incarnation within a material form/body. You can think of the soul's experience within material incarnations as being more 'heavenly' or 'hellish' depending on the particular circumstances and states its destiny carries it through, but if you are stuck on the dichotomy between material existence and spiritual experience, it may be difficult for you to think purely in terms of the spiritual experience(s) that correspond with "heaven" and "hell" and/or "purgatory."

As for whether God is some arbitrary judge who has 'expectations' that you have to live up to in order to attain heaven, that strikes me as a naive and simplistic notion. It is more accurate to say that the universe works like clockwork, so every action causes effects, which cause further effects, etc. and that the overall ramifications of that are that sin causes suffering, where 'sin' refers to actions that are not in perfect harmony with a loving universe devoid of harm and suffering.

You've probably heard the familiar Bible quote, "the wages of sin is death," but maybe you haven't interpreted it to mean that things that cause death are sinful. If you would understand the term, 'sin,' to refer to anything that naturally causes or helps lead to death, then it might be easier for you to accept the truth of this basic statement that "the wages of sin are death."

But then the quote also reads, "but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord," so there seems to be hope of overcoming death. This can be interpreted in different ways, but if you cross-reference it with the Buddhist idea that you can transcend the cycles of birth and death by attaining detachment from desire, there is correspondence between that idea and the Christian idea that we can be saved from sin and gradually sanctified through Christ.

How can these seemingly different ideas from different religions correspond? Because if you think of death as a temporary experience that divides the continuity of eternal life with suffering and consciousness-breach, then life is by default everlasting and relative peace of mind comes from the experience of continuity of consciousness throughout subsequent deaths and rebirths; and likewise suffering comes from attachment to your current life as the ultimate state, which you repeat over and over in subsequent lives.

It is similar to the experience of dreaming, which can cause suffering when you feel like the dream you're experiencing is your ultimate reality; but the moment you become aware that it is just a dream and that your consciousness will continue to progress through a series of dreams, and then be awake for the day before going to sleep again the next night, etc. that sense of continuity of consciousness affords you peace of mind that isn't available if you would think your life was going to end each night as you lie down to go to sleep.

Still, even if you become aware that consciousness is eternal and that death is a temporary state between the present life and the hereafter, then you still have to contend with the fact that the seeds we sow in the present are reaped in the future by ourselves and future generations. So the world can grow more heavenly or hellish depending on whether people put effort into sowing good seeds or bad ones for the future.

You could be reborn life after life into a world where the climate is degenerating, or into a world where humans are gradually recognizing their negative effects and correcting them to achieve a better future.

It could also be that when we are successful enough at adopting the right attitudes toward sin and reform, that forgiveness and salvation come into full bloom and we are allowed to completely transcend this purgatory and inhabit higher heavens where suffering no longer exists at all.

Obviously we can't know by direct observation with our senses what the hereafter holds in store, but there are patterns of cause and effect that are recognized by wise people of various religions, who then try to reach out to others by teaching and recording their wisdom. If you want to reject all such wisdom on the basis of narrow materialist assumptions about consciousness ending when the body dies, you can gamble on that belief, but you can also consider other possibilities and think about what you have to do if you want to experience more peace and happiness in your (eternal) future.

Actually, I don't believe that "it" all ends when the body dies. If I were to believe that, it would mean that I believe that the soul (what I really am) is a product of my body. What I really am is not the product of my body. My body is basically a temporary instrument that, like all physical things, will break down and dissolve. In that sense, it is ghostly. It is interesting that when Jesus allegedly died on the cross, it is said that he gave up the ghost. But from talking to Christians, it is clear that they don't understand that his body was the ghost, not the actual self.

No, I'm not stuck on that. There is no separation between material experience and non material experience. People tend to hold the idea that the more solid something is, the more real it is. This is backward, and appeals only to the ego. The belief that denseness equals reality is a block to spiritual attainment. Not that anything needs to be attained; like truth, attainment is neither easy nor hard. It simply is. Truth is not something hidden which needs to be found. Remove the lies, and all that is left is the truth; you can't miss it. The only block to truth is the strength of the grip/need with which one holds the lies. Any search for truth is actually a search for the lies and the way to come out from behind them.

Eternal life is yours; it always was. You are your own savior who will eventually save yourself from the fear that you need to be saved. If you need to be saved, you will need a hero, and when you adopt a hero, you forget about your self, and your strength is no longer your own because you believe that you will be taking something from Jesus by acknowledging your own power.

You mentioned reincarnation. That concept is based on the idea of linear procession/progression of lifetimes. Would you be surprised to find that you have a thousand lifetimes occurring simultaneously, each one bleeding through and affecting the others?

There is only that which you resonate to, and thereby draw to yourself. But it's a pretty tricky business. Let's say you resonate to helping the poor and destitute. In your hunt for, and desire to find, some poor and destitute souls, you may inadvertently desire a reality in which there is an ample supply of poor and destitute souls to exercise your altruistic nature on. You might accomplish this by subconsciously voting for a governor or president who has publicly stated that he would like to see an end to welfare benefits. A very tricky business indeed.

To continue, if we seek to find anything other than our self and the self’s extension--ground, rain, garden, cabin, and friend--then we create the unreal, and you can call that sin if you like. If we look for perfect, holy beings, then we will in fact create them. Conversely, if we look for evil, we will create it. But it goes further than that. Whatever you create, you create its opposite. That’s where trouble begins. When ever you look for God--and the more perfect you envision him--the more you create the evil one to the same degree though in the opposite direction. There is the center, and anything you create in one direction also creates its opposite in the other direction. And this is not to say that there needs to be a balance between these two principles. It is to say that these two principles need not be. But we live in a realm where the vast majority keep creating their beliefs of great holiness, which in turn creates its opposite--great darkness--in equal proportion. If you insist upon a perfect holiness, it can only exist in contrast to something else--its opposite. Each gains its definitive value from the other, but never forget that you are the co-author. Such is free will. It can create Eden, and it can create Hell, and ultimately both.

You're talking about the subjective dimension of reality, but sin refers to both subjective and objective actions that cause harm in various ways.


Well, it is true that the more aware you become of sin, the more aware you become of how much sin there is in the world; but that is like saying the more aware you become of metal roofing, the more buildings you see with metal roofs. In other words, it just means you're paying better attention.


Christianity recognizes the impossibility of attaining perfection. We are all sinners fundamentally because this world is not and cannot be perfect. Confession and repentance for sin is thus the solution, because by gaining forgiveness for sin, we can continue to live in the world without being "of the world."

Free will indeed allows you to choose sin, but it also allows you to choose virtue, including confession and repentance for sin, which brings forgiveness and ultimately deliverance a little at a time.

Ignorance is bliss, in a sense, because even though we have always experienced suffering, even as naive/innocent children, we have also always had a sense of what it means to be in a perfect paradise of bliss. Some people project this experience of paradise into the womb, but fetuses probably actually suffer quite a bit as they are growing and changing/developing in radical ways.

Still, when we receive deliverance from some sin that's possessed us, we become joyful and blissful like children. Think of the tobacco addict or alcoholist who overcomes the urge to smoke/drink and feels the great relief from burden that comes with that. It feels like we are children again, only without all the suffering of losing teeth, being bullied, feeling powerless, hating foods whose flavor seems strong and bad because our taste buds are still very sensitive, having to struggle with learning and homework, etc. etc.

Indeed, I guess you could say that we 'create' sin in order to forge a path toward virtue, but by 'creating' and confessing/repenting sin, we also 'create' our forgiveness/deliverance and by doing so we come to know God as the greater/higher power who created us and our ability to 'create' these experiences we go through as part of His larger creation, in His image.