"When you look for the baby Christ this Christmas, look into the face of every babe you see. Each one has come to save the world. Each one is who we’ve been waiting for. Each one is the hope of the world and God’s most beloved child."
I took another look at your exchange with Jack, and I have a question: Is it possible that our lives still have a purpose even if God doesn't exist? And that the purpose is to alleviate suffering?
The reason why these kinds of questions stump me is that I've always labelled myself as an agnostic. But recently I've had the idea that maybe God can't be detected through our senses (or our amplified senses using the kinds of instruments invented by physicists and astronomers). But perhaps God can be detected in non-sensory ways. I was raised as an Episcopalian, and Christians seems to accept this idea (they use phrases like "the still, small voice"). I used to reject this idea, but now I consider it as a possibility.
Excellent question, Mark. I use the words God, purpose and meaning as synonymous. So let's say the world of your senses is all there is. Obviously, the purpose of your life is to avoid suffering before you die, same as all animals. Helping others to alleviate their suffering is a good purpose to have, because why not? It's a fine purpose.
However, it's a purpose that you've chosen in order to give your life meaning, which it doesn't inherently have. In the world of sensory perception, your life exists merely for the sake of having the least suffering and the most pleasure before you die. That's it. Everything else you're making up.
Now the church gives you a different purpose--doing 'good' by its definition in order to avoid suffering AFTER you die. There's no escape from punishment with death. God requires atonement for the original sin of being born and even the only sinless human--Jesus--had to be tortured to death to appease the god of sacrifice.
So there you have the two options given us--evolution from monkey genes for a meaningless existence or pain and suffering created by God because he wants to test our love for him. And then, of course, there's the third paradigm.
this was a fun commentary with solid points and a 'reasoned' optimism, ultimately.
yes, the resort to insult does seem to be, i'm inferring from how you put it, expressing unexamined dogma.
i'm chewing on your broader theme of system vs individual because a challenge i see is that this is a chicken and egg problem. to what extent is the system expressing the *state* of the individual, a *state* that the system itself creates? how can the system be recreated if the individuals within the system continue to create and energise it with attitudes of mind and expressions of words and actions? and yet, will changing the individual in isolation from other individuals be able to reconstruct / transform a malevolent system to a benevolent one?
i've been discussing an important aspect of this, imo, that our 'system' is significantly a manifestation of 'good' humans being born into and barely *surviving* being alive within a bully stockholm syndrome culture as malevolent system. (and one that i think has been extant for significantly longer than 3000 years.) anyway, my decades long look at the ubiquity of bully language indicates to me how this language creates the severe limitations of mind that enable the displacement individual agency to be replaced by obeisance to *the* recognised, respected even revered bullies of the religions of god, economics, reason, history, political ideology and science — all of which have been cloaked by the authorities in the wizard's garb of the 'proper' authority!
this hidden bully language is the ground and well spring that nourishes malevolent actions masked behind ostensibly good intentions. and in my twenty plus years of observing this phenomena pretty much all of us use bully language unconsciously and in doing so express our acquiescence to the conformity pressure of bully stockholm syndrome and that that conformity also propagates and perpetuates the malevolence of the bully culture as it manifests in property ownership and the debt system of money as well as in the demand for obedience to an authority, be it religion, science, reason, history or politics — all of which are fundamentally religious in the sense of creating separation from the autonomy of self to obeisance to an authority outside the self. (you've read my recent detailed explication of that and provided me with your well expressed critique of my manner of presenting it.)
so... chicken and egg: can we change the system without changing the individual? because it is the individual within the collective that by his/her actions taken and not taken who is perpetuating and propagating the system. and yet, is it possible for the changed individual — the one de-programmed from the 'cult' of bully stockholm syndrome — one at a time, to be sufficient to change the system by either dropping out of it or from within it?
my answer, at least for today, is that the two are to work together — how can it be otherwise, it seems to me. it is beholden to see how the system creates a trauma induced schismogenesis that empowers the individual to heal from that. and with the healing the individual begins changing the system in small ways, grass roots ways, such as becoming a member of the school board, ignoring 'proper' school curricula, changing the fundamental workings of a small business or the management style of a bigger one.
anyway, thoughts for the day on the eve of christmas. and with that i wish you all the best of an a-biblical christ-amassing of family and community with joy of life.
all the best with what is changing at christmas, with we individuals with increasing coherence and personal agency renounce the systems of illegitimate authority and embrace the authentic authority of self within systems of community. be joyful because everything changes! with peace, respect, love and exuberant joy. feliz navidad.
🙏❤️🧘♂️🙌☯️🙌🧘♂️❤️🙏
p.s.: it came to me, on this near midnight clear, that you may appreciate my adding my comments to youtube. so, that i've done. and will do so going forward. goodnight.
Thanks for adding your comments here and on YT, Guy. I recognized your style before I recognized the email name.
I spent a long time trying to change the system. Even one little piece of it, like my local schools. From my experience, I found that impossible. I could have thrown all the money and time I had at it, and not added one minute to the school schedule.
What each of us can certainly do as individuals is challenge the old stories and change them into new ones. From my perspective now, I'd say it's better to go along with the system as long as you can make yourself happy within it, and change the stories. Then, when the time is right to change the system, you'll be ready with a new story.
But that's just where I've come to. Happy Christmas Guy, which I can say with no conflict whatsoever, since it's my conviction that you are the Christ ;-)
i don't disagree with the challenge of the individual changing the system! even the small one of a home owner's association from years ago was my experience of that. although the most pernicious experience i had was with the union i was 'forced' to join with being hired into the union shop. that was so malevolent that i would leave the meetings gagging with the passive aggressive mendacity of bullies hurling insults at each other. so...
and so with more experienced eyes i now see that your point of the toxic structure creating hurtful people is a valid. and that that seeing is now tempered with the interesting idea that undigested trauma traps the individual at the age of the trauma: it stops maturation. so, we are awash in a sea of hurt children-like creatures lashing out at each other. how to inspire in the hurt children their desire to take personal responsibility rather than casting stones and castigating the other as bully with the language and actions of a bully? yup. tough indeed!
i wonder to what extant has the convid completely over-the-top bullying that used both the malevolent energies of toxic / tyrannical male / female been a, or even the, 2x4 across our heads to jar us out from a comatose-like slumber of procrastination and deferred personal responsibility? was the convid a turning point of the system that will see itself collapse as more and more sleepers wake and take personal responsibility and remove blind and mostly unexamined trust in our authorities? it is truly a fascinating time to be alive!
time will tell. time for sleep. all around me the oaxacenos are blasting in christmas with fire works and big noise makers. at least for the last hour and this will likely continue for another hour.
There's a lot worth responding to... I guess you're right that I was using a rhetorical trick when I said "Are you really so sure?", although in my defence I wasn't conscious that I was doing that... I was copying something I remembered Carl Jung saying.
I'm flattered that you've made this video, and I will respond to it in greater detail. There is no question that you have much more historical knowledge than I do, and I'm not sure that I'll be able to respond soon to the finer points you raise - I'll have to look into a number of things, and I'm not sure how long that will take.
But if we are to clarify things a bit - because I know that we're on the same page ideologically - could you point to anything that Marvin Harris puts forward that you think is a misrepresentation. I was very impressed with his analysis, and I think that he presents some very interesting ideas... but he's not really declaring anything. He's presenting a novel interpretation which appears to clear up some of the most befuddling parts of the New Testament. If I have a bias here - it's this: I want to present the Christ as an anarchist revolutionary. And I think that the zealot-bandit military-messianic insurrectionist movement that was happening in the first century A.D. is fascinating history and lends itself well to an anarchist interpretation of the Christ Mythos. The fact that Judea was in open revolt against Rome at the exact time that Jesus is supposed to have live has been memory-holed and whitewashed, if you ask me.
Another question that I have for you is this: Can we agree that John the Baptist was a historical figure who was part of this revolutionary zealot-bandit military-messianic movement?
I'll have more to say in coming days... Thanks for the Signal Boost you've given me by making this post!
Excellent reply, Crow, and I'm so happy that you want to engage on this. Of all the possible rabbit holes, I think this holds the most hope and promise if we can dig a little deeper to what really happened.
I absolutely share your bias towards the Christ as an anarchist revolutionary movement. And there is HUGE significance to the context of the Judean revolt--which successfully kicked out Rome from Jerusalem for two years and was spreading like wildfire to other Roman colonies like Samaria. But here's where I would go you one further--it wasn't just memory-holed. The entire purpose of the Jesus story was to kill the Christ.
I'll leave it at that for the night. Tomorrow I'll do a post on the Christ and what I see as the real Christmas. But after that I'll go back to your original post, which I think had the Marvin Harris points, and do an episode responding in detail. I'm going to follow my format from Have a Better Argument so that I can try it out as an experiment in productive disagreement.
But maybe I should wait to disabuse you of Jesus until after the wedding! I don't want to get you in trouble with those catechism priests. They take religion VERY seriously in your town ;-) Feliz Navidad for all the baby Christs born tomorrow!
Okay... I think I follow you... Here's an analogy. If you ask anyone under the age of 16 in the U.S. these days about the Black Panthers, including black kids, they'll probably assume you're talking about the Hollywood movie... So has the propaganda machine succeeded in burying the history of the militant Black Liberationists who were the original Black Panthers? Quite possibly...
Are you saying that something similar happened with the Christ Mythos? Because if you are, I'm all ears... I think that's what Marvin Harris is suggesting as well, although he's a little understated about the political implications of what he's saying. I don't think he was really looking to draw lessons that could inform radical political movements... he was looking at the Christ Mythos through the lens of anthropology and trying to unravel an age-old mystery.
Pretty sure you'd love Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches, by the way. A classic! One of the most accessible books on anthropological theory you're likely to come across.
Tereza- rustling all the feathers! I didn’t watch the video and I don’t know if you expand on this, but I do remember the part about doing good and alleviating suffering and doing better by helping folks alleviate their own suffering from the book and I just think it’s a lovely concept and I dare a parallel to parenting- by helping my children learn how to achieve themselves, I alleviate future suffering on them. By learning how to be capable, I set them up for a less stressful life. Or so I hope.
Yes, that's a perfect extension of the idea, Tonika. Here's one example--it's so much easier to clean the house yourself than it is to get kids to do it (especially if your spouse is kinda like one of the kids when it comes to cleaning ... not to implicate anyone). It's a lot of suffering the first dozen times, perhaps. But once they resign themselves to doing it, they can't help but feel proud. They start seeing it clean and enjoying it. I know girls are different but even Cassandra, who's much more like a boy that way, found her niche in the really grungy, dirty jobs. And bathrooms also became her thing.
I love that you resonated with my definition of doing good. That really means a lot to me.
It takes special pride after a good bathroom clean! I have one boy who would just rather clean the bathroom real well and not do any other chore. I have another who likes doing “heavy lifting” so is always game for bringing in groceries, throwing out the trash, or moving furniture. Neither one is into dish washing. I made the mistake of not pressing them too hard on chores early on.
From my little glimpses into your family, you're doing just fine with all three. They love you, they love each other, and they want the family to thrive. Your experiment in parenting doesn't need to be the same as mine. You're teaching lessons in resiliency I never thought of, or could have gotten away with. Your education ideas are brave and brilliant. Keep doing the Tonika! (to the tune of the timewarp again)
Well now that you’ve brought up a Rocky Horror reference, I’ll have it stuck in my head for the rest of the night, thank you very much!
Seriously though, thanks for throwing me some kindness about my parental ways. Struggling with keeping up (always tough around the holidays and right after) and this is a nice reminder that sometimes, sure, there is fumbling and mistakes, but sometimes I slay. We do the best we can.
The quantity and quality of thought and comments are so overwhelming, my eptiaph is in danger of becoming "He read and thought a lot about Tereza's thoughts". 😂
Just a season's greeting here, and a thought. Maybe much of my failure to launch in Japan Inc. is due to my mistaken understanding of human nature. I thought that as an educator, I would do better by enabling others to alleviate the suffering of others, ad infinitum. Decades of trying, and about ¥500, might buy me a cup of coffee. Meh, it was fun while it lasted.
Falling back on a long time metaphor for real time feeling, Merry Christmas Tereza!
Has human nature caused your 'failure to launch,' as you call it? Or was it the system? From what you've told me, the only education valued in Japan is one that enables someone to get a job, preferably that pays well. All of the available time and money is sucked into that black hole, where people are competing against each other.
Under my system, anyone can teach and anyone can choose from whom they want to learn. If someone has a handful of students, they can make a living equal to the cost of housing. Or do something else agreeable that others value.
In this next year when we launch the RetroMetro simulation of my caret system, I think you should move in. Maybe on Apocaloptimist Lane, maybe start an adjacent Japan Junction. It would, I suspect, prove to you that your 'failure' is merely the sign of a healthy, sane, moral person 'failing' to thrive in a sick, insane, immoral system.
But in the between-time, I wish you, Steve, a warm and kind Christmas. I hope you recognize how well loved you are in the real world, and that you feel that from me.
Teresa... we agree on so much. I'll dispute, however, that Christians have done more harm than good. I'll start by quoting renowned historian Will Durant. Durant, who was not a Christian, wrote the following incisive statement in The Story of Civilization, Vol III: Caesar and Christ.
“The Christian evidence for Christ begins with the letters ascribed to Saint Paul. Some of these are of uncertain authorship; several, antedating A.D. 64, are almost universally accounted as substantially genuine. No one has questioned the existence of Paul, or his repeated meetings with Peter, James, and John; and Paul enviously admits that these men had known Christ in his flesh. The accepted epistles frequently refer to the Last Supper and the Crucifixion…. The contradictions are of minutiae, not substance; in essentials the synoptic gospels agree remarkably well, and form a consistent portrait of Christ. In the enthusiasm of its discoveries the Higher Criticism has applied to the New Testament tests of authenticity so severe that by them a hundred ancient worthies, for example Hammurabi, David, Socrates would fade into legend. Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus’ arrest, Peter’s denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospel. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature of the history of Western man.”
Hello, Claudia! Thanks for starting out with how much we agree. I agree on that!
I would never make any generalization about Christians, who are all good people by my theology. My focus is whether the story of Jesus has done harm by causing good people to do bad things. The story of Jesus has empowered the Wholly Roaming Empire, as I call the church. The popes appointed the kings. They're the power behind the thrones. Colonization would have had no moral justification without the words, "Go out and subdue the nations." No matter how you interpret that, the invaders let it quell their conscience for whatever they did to those who were deemed to not have a soul.
Paul was the most hated figure in the Bible by the slaves, according to Frederich Douglas. Perhaps Noah was a contender. Paul's statements about slaves returning and submitting to their masters was read to them every Sunday. "Peter" gives the inheritance to rule to the popes, and creates a hierarchy, an inheritance order of archons. That power over others has caused more suffering than any other institution. I thought, perhaps marriage was the exception but the patriarchal power to own a wife or child comes straight from this twisted story, starting with Eve. So that has to be included.
The story that we're all the Christ can't be distorted into power over others. It's entirely beneficial. In your quote, it says 'Christ' repeatedly but only uses 'Jesus' referring to his arrest. So it negates any other concept of the Christ by making it the last name and identity of one historical figure, according to the story. That baby born tomorrow will not be the Christ, but will be born into original sin, a fallen outcast from Eden. Really?
Our mutual friend Diana gave me a copy of the Urantia text that's on my bookshelf. I read the beginning but didn't get to the part about Jesus. What it presents, however, are false dichotomies. I'm entertaining the possibility that the whole world only exists in our single Mind--that's not materialism and certainly not science. It's a rejection of hierarchy. If I'm willing to see myself as no better than you, it's a short synapse to see you as me in another form, and vice versa. It's spirituality that isn't based on superiority.
I happened to open to a passage in A Course in Miracles today that was titled "Christmas as the end of sacrifice." I'm going to read it into a post for tomorrow. I'll be interested in your thoughts because I feel that it gives a very different view of the Christ. Thanks, Claudia.
Then I will move on to a remarkable book that will enlighten you more than anything else you have ever read: The Urantia Book... the last third of which is a biography of Jesus and his importance to our planet. I'll snagged a longish sample from one of the last Chapters (Papers) in that book in what follows: Paper 195 After Pentecost Section 6. Materialism
Scientists have unintentionally precipitated mankind into a materialistic panic; they have started an unthinking run on the moral bank of the ages, but this bank of human experience has vast spiritual resources; it can stand the demands being made upon it. Only unthinking men become panicky about the spiritual assets of the human race. When the materialistic-secular panic is over, the religion of Jesus will not be found bankrupt. The spiritual bank of the kingdom of heaven will be paying out faith, hope, and moral security to all who draw upon it “in His name.”
No matter what the apparent conflict between materialism and the teachings of Jesus may be, you can rest assured that, in the ages to come, the teachings of the Master will fully triumph. In reality, true religion cannot become involved in any controversy with science; it is in no way concerned with material things. Religion is simply indifferent to, but sympathetic with, science, while it supremely concerns itself with the scientist.
The pursuit of mere knowledge, without the attendant interpretation of wisdom and the spiritual insight of religious experience, eventually leads to pessimism and human despair. A little knowledge is truly disconcerting.
At the time of this writing the worst of the materialistic age is over; the day of a better understanding is already beginning to dawn. The higher minds of the scientific world are no longer wholly materialistic in their philosophy, but the rank and file of the people still lean in that direction as a result of former teachings. But this age of physical realism is only a passing episode in man’s life on earth. Modern science has left true religion—the teachings of Jesus as translated in the lives of his believers—untouched. All science has done is to destroy the childlike illusions of the misinterpretations of life.
Science is a quantitative experience, religion a qualitative experience, as regards man’s life on earth. Science deals with phenomena; religion, with origins, values, and goals. To assign causes as an explanation of physical phenomena is to confess ignorance of ultimates and in the end only leads the scientist straight back to the first great cause—the Universal Father of Paradise.
The violent swing from an age of miracles to an age of machines has proved altogether upsetting to man. The cleverness and dexterity of the false philosophies of mechanism belie their very mechanistic contentions. The fatalistic agility of the mind of a materialist forever disproves his assertions that the universe is a blind and purposeless energy phenomenon.
The mechanistic naturalism of some supposedly educated men and the thoughtless secularism of the man in the street are both exclusively concerned with things; they are barren of all real values, sanctions, and satisfactions of a spiritual nature, as well as being devoid of faith, hope, and eternal assurances. One of the great troubles with modern life is that man thinks he is too busy to find time for spiritual meditation and religious devotion.
Materialism reduces man to a soulless automaton and constitutes him merely an arithmetical symbol finding a helpless place in the mathematical formula of an unromantic and mechanistic universe. But whence comes all this vast universe of mathematics without a Master Mathematician? Science may expatiate on the conservation of matter, but religion validates the conservation of men’s souls—it concerns their experience with spiritual realities and eternal values.
The materialistic sociologist of today surveys a community, makes a report thereon, and leaves the people as he found them. Nineteen hundred years ago, unlearned Galileans surveyed Jesus giving his life as a spiritual contribution to man’s inner experience and then went out and turned the whole Roman Empire upside down.
But religious leaders are making a great mistake when they try to call modern man to spiritual battle with the trumpet blasts of the Middle Ages. Religion must provide itself with new and up-to-date slogans. Neither democracy nor any other political panacea will take the place of spiritual progress. False religions may represent an evasion of reality, but Jesus in his gospel introduced mortal man to the very entrance upon an eternal reality of spiritual progression.
To say that mind “emerged” from matter explains nothing. If the universe were merely a mechanism and mind were unapart from matter, we would never have two differing interpretations of any observed phenomenon. The concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness are not inherent in either physics or chemistry. A machine cannot know, much less know truth, hunger for righteousness, and cherish goodness.
Science may be physical, but the mind of the truth-discerning scientist is at once supermaterial. Matter knows not truth, neither can it love mercy nor delight in spiritual realities. Moral convictions based on spiritual enlightenment and rooted in human experience are just as real and certain as mathematical deductions based on physical observations, but on another and higher level.
If men were only machines, they would react more or less uniformly to a material universe. Individuality, much less personality, would be nonexistent.
The fact of the absolute mechanism of Paradise at the center of the universe of universes, in the presence of the unqualified volition of the Second Source and Center, makes forever certain that determiners are not the exclusive law of the cosmos. Materialism is there, but it is not exclusive; mechanism is there, but it is not unqualified; determinism is there, but it is not alone.
The finite universe of matter would eventually become uniform and deterministic but for the combined presence of mind and spirit. The influence of the cosmic mind constantly injects spontaneity into even the material worlds.
Freedom or initiative in any realm of existence is directly proportional to the degree of spiritual influence and cosmic-mind control; that is, in human experience, the degree of the actuality of doing “the Father’s will.” And so, when you once start out to find God, that is the conclusive proof that God has already found you.
The sincere pursuit of goodness, beauty, and truth leads to God. And every scientific discovery demonstrates the existence of both freedom and uniformity in the universe. The discoverer was free to make the discovery. The thing discovered is real and apparently uniform, or else it could not have become known as a thing.
Our infinitely intelligent Creator (Preserver, Destroyer) knows our needs more deeply than we do. Thus, He, being so bountiful and merciful bestows upon us what we most need in abundance and what is of lesser importance/necessity is rare. Among the rarest of all things in CERTAINTY and overwhelmingly abundant is UNCERTAINTY. And yet the limited ego-mind leaps to place greater value on certainty and take uncertainty for granted. Wise? No. The means by which the desire for certainty is sought is by assuming/believing one has it. Delusional thinking. Embrace uncertainty!
As someone who went to Catholic grade school, HS and college, every time someone told me "we'll never know," they meant that I should accept that the infallible Pope and Bible DID know. My message, Ron, IS that we should embrace uncertainty, which you don't do.
You make a LOT of declarative statements about who God is: "Our infinitely intelligent Creator (Preserver, Destroyer)" who is "bountiful and merciful." And what "He" does (another certainty on your part): "knows our needs more deeply than we do" and "bestows upon us what we most need in abundance."
Then you call me a "limited ego-mind" that is not wise and has delusional thinking, because I need to embrace uncertainty. What you're really saying is that I shouldn't give facts and logic that contradict YOUR certainty. Physician, take thy own medicine.
Tereza, upon rereading my comment, I see how you may have taken the content as being directed toward you personally. However, that was not my intention. My commentary was meant as a general observation about human beings. The "declarative" descriptions about God are based upon my own convictions. I failed to make that point. I am sorry these failures on my part disturbed you. I apologize.
I wasn't disturbed by your statement, Ron. Why would I be? It's interesting that when women argue the logic and consistency of someone's statement, they're often seen as having an emotional reaction.
I didn't see it at all as directed towards me personally, other than an example of the point you were making. However, what you say is internally contradictory. You make statements of absolute assumed certainty "based upon [your] own convictions," make 'general observations' that people who don't agree with you are 'limited ego-minds,' not wise and have delusional thinking, and then tell them to 'embrace uncertainty.'
Some would apply the word hypocritical to that, but I think it's so ingrained that you don't recognize you're doing it. But now that I've pointed it out, do you agree that you're expressing certainty while telling others to embrace uncertainty?
I stand by my commentary on the value of certainty versus uncertainty. It has been my perspective since I was first exposed to it. As regards "limited ego-minds" they are by nature limited, mine and everyone's wit very few exceptions, like perhaps illumined saints. By "embrace uncertainty" was a suggestion based on its value.
I'm in full agreement with you on the value of uncertainty. My only dogma, the one belief I refuse to raise to question, is that I'm no better than anyone else. Everything else is up for debate.
When you say your statements are 'based on your own convictions,' the etymology of the word conviction means "mental state of being convinced or fully persuaded" and "firm belief, a belief held as proven". In other words, certainty. I'm arguing that our beliefs in systems and stories should be raised to uncertainty.
Merry Christmas, Tereza! I did not know how ti reach you via a private email message, so I decided to post here on this thread. This morning while having breakfast, I continued and finished reading a discourse, that got me thinking that I should share an excerpt that explained well something I was conversing about on a recent zoom chat. a couple of days ago. As I continued reading, it came to mind that the theme/subject of the discourse might interest you as it touches upon, I think, some aspects of what our exchange included. I will give you a link to it, if you are inclined to check it out. The title of the discourse is "The Nature Of the Ego and Its Termination, part 2, the Ego as an Affirmation of Separateness"; it is in volume 2 of "DISCOURSES" by Meher Baba. The link: https://www.discoursesbymeherbaba.org/volume2.pdf
page 58
May the New Year bring showers of blessings of all varieties to you and yours, and all receive a healthy soaking.
What I may hold as a conviction does not require certainty. I am fully open to hearing seemingly contradictory concepts and/or ideas that refine or deepen my conviction.
ABSTRACT Evidence is presented to substantiate the presence of at least a trinity of Christian Identity Frauds masquerading in the Academy of Plato during the 3rd century. (1,2,3) From the 4th century mention is resurrected of Porphyry's Christian Identity Fraud and the likelihood is explored that the Christian Presbyter Arius of Alexandria, is just another Identity Fraud in a pattern of similar evidence. (4,5) The events of the Council of Nicaea are reconstructed in such a manner as to narrate from the profane perspective, the heresy, the exile and the "damnatio memoriae" of Arius of Alexandria, a non christian theologian/philosopher associated with the Alexandrian academy of Plato c.324 CE. (6,7)
Stegiel, where did you find that quote? I had to reread to see if I could find it. It's the opposite of my point, which is that the story of Jesus is a literary invention written to destroy the Christ, which was an anti-imperial movement led by Judas the Nazarene. The story of Jesus, I suspect, caused 2000 more years of confusion about a God who requires sacrifice and suffering, rather than a God of love. But what you cite is interesting, and fits my theory, I think.
When, long ago, I first learned that some theorized that Jesus had never existed as an historical figure, I dismissed the notion as mere crankism, as most still do. Indeed, Rudolf Bultmann, supposedly the arch-skeptic, quipped that no sane person could doubt that Jesus existed (though he himself came surprisingly close to the same opinion, as did Paul Tillich). For a number of years I held a more or less Bultmannian estimate of the historical Jesus as a prophet heralding the arrival of the eschatological Kingdom of God, an end to which his parables, faith healings and exorcisms were directed. Jesus had, I thought, predicted the coming of the Son of Man, an angelic figure who should raise the dead and judge mankind. When his cleansing of the temple invited the unforgiving ire of the Sadducee establishment, in cahoots with the Romans, he sealed his own doom. He died by crucifixion, and a few days later his disciples began experiencing visions of him raised from the dead. They concluded that he himself was now to be considered the Son of Man, and they expected his messianic advent in the near future.
From this eminently reasonable position (its cogency reinforced by the unfolding of the messiahship of Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson) I eventually found myself gravitating to that crazy view, that Jesus hadn’t existed, that he was mythic all the way down, like Hercules. I do not hold it as a dogma. I do not prefer that it be true. It is just that the evidence now seems to me to point that way. The burden of proof would seem to belong with those who believe there was an historical man named Jesus. I fully admit and remind the reader that all historical hypotheses are provisional and tentative. This one certainly is. And yet I do favor it.
I will dredge it up from his citation. His thesis is that Constantine needed a new faith so he could sack the Pagan temples and break their power. He argues that the faith was built from existing traditions consolidated into the narrative of Jesus. Which given antiquity is not unreasonable. Adding to this is work on Platonism and the Hebrew Bible. https://vridar.org/series-index/russell-gmirkin-plato-and-the-hebrew-bible/
No, I mean where did you find the quote that I say "The story of Jesus Christ was based on the life of a real flesh-and-blood person." I would never conflate Jesus and Christ because I think they're polar opposite concepts. Jesus represents exclusivity and superiority as 'the ONLY begotten Son of God.' The Christ is inclusivity and the recognition that we're ALL begotten from God.
So it seems like you didn't read my article before you posted what you saw as disagreeing with me, and making up a quote from me to argue against. Your research is interesting, but it doesn't seem to come from a place of reciprocal respect when you don't even know my name, much less my position.
No I read. I do not think Jesus existed. I think the myth exists only after Constantine. In other words yes Christ is a symbol but the man no, a creation of Constantine’s scribes based on multiple traditions.
Tezza your quote in full and the part I cited is at bottom.
TWO QUESTIONS FOR SECULARISTS WHO BELIEVE THAT JESUS CHRIST IS A PURELY FICTIONAL CHARACTER
To those people, I have two questions.
Are you really so sure? Most people who believe that Jesus never existed don’t seem to have seriously investigated the question.
Which is more likely - that Jesus never existed, or that the Christ Mythos was based upon a true story which was subject to later distortions, embellishments, deletions, and additions?
I’ve taken an interest in this subject for a long time, and I have concluded that it is reasonable to assume that the story of Jesus Christ was based on the life of a real flesh-and-blood person, but many of the details of his life story are up for debate, including his actual name.
"When you look for the baby Christ this Christmas, look into the face of every babe you see. Each one has come to save the world. Each one is who we’ve been waiting for. Each one is the hope of the world and God’s most beloved child."
^THIS. ❤️💕❤️
I took another look at your exchange with Jack, and I have a question: Is it possible that our lives still have a purpose even if God doesn't exist? And that the purpose is to alleviate suffering?
The reason why these kinds of questions stump me is that I've always labelled myself as an agnostic. But recently I've had the idea that maybe God can't be detected through our senses (or our amplified senses using the kinds of instruments invented by physicists and astronomers). But perhaps God can be detected in non-sensory ways. I was raised as an Episcopalian, and Christians seems to accept this idea (they use phrases like "the still, small voice"). I used to reject this idea, but now I consider it as a possibility.
Excellent question, Mark. I use the words God, purpose and meaning as synonymous. So let's say the world of your senses is all there is. Obviously, the purpose of your life is to avoid suffering before you die, same as all animals. Helping others to alleviate their suffering is a good purpose to have, because why not? It's a fine purpose.
However, it's a purpose that you've chosen in order to give your life meaning, which it doesn't inherently have. In the world of sensory perception, your life exists merely for the sake of having the least suffering and the most pleasure before you die. That's it. Everything else you're making up.
Now the church gives you a different purpose--doing 'good' by its definition in order to avoid suffering AFTER you die. There's no escape from punishment with death. God requires atonement for the original sin of being born and even the only sinless human--Jesus--had to be tortured to death to appease the god of sacrifice.
So there you have the two options given us--evolution from monkey genes for a meaningless existence or pain and suffering created by God because he wants to test our love for him. And then, of course, there's the third paradigm.
hola, tereza.
this was a fun commentary with solid points and a 'reasoned' optimism, ultimately.
yes, the resort to insult does seem to be, i'm inferring from how you put it, expressing unexamined dogma.
i'm chewing on your broader theme of system vs individual because a challenge i see is that this is a chicken and egg problem. to what extent is the system expressing the *state* of the individual, a *state* that the system itself creates? how can the system be recreated if the individuals within the system continue to create and energise it with attitudes of mind and expressions of words and actions? and yet, will changing the individual in isolation from other individuals be able to reconstruct / transform a malevolent system to a benevolent one?
i've been discussing an important aspect of this, imo, that our 'system' is significantly a manifestation of 'good' humans being born into and barely *surviving* being alive within a bully stockholm syndrome culture as malevolent system. (and one that i think has been extant for significantly longer than 3000 years.) anyway, my decades long look at the ubiquity of bully language indicates to me how this language creates the severe limitations of mind that enable the displacement individual agency to be replaced by obeisance to *the* recognised, respected even revered bullies of the religions of god, economics, reason, history, political ideology and science — all of which have been cloaked by the authorities in the wizard's garb of the 'proper' authority!
this hidden bully language is the ground and well spring that nourishes malevolent actions masked behind ostensibly good intentions. and in my twenty plus years of observing this phenomena pretty much all of us use bully language unconsciously and in doing so express our acquiescence to the conformity pressure of bully stockholm syndrome and that that conformity also propagates and perpetuates the malevolence of the bully culture as it manifests in property ownership and the debt system of money as well as in the demand for obedience to an authority, be it religion, science, reason, history or politics — all of which are fundamentally religious in the sense of creating separation from the autonomy of self to obeisance to an authority outside the self. (you've read my recent detailed explication of that and provided me with your well expressed critique of my manner of presenting it.)
so... chicken and egg: can we change the system without changing the individual? because it is the individual within the collective that by his/her actions taken and not taken who is perpetuating and propagating the system. and yet, is it possible for the changed individual — the one de-programmed from the 'cult' of bully stockholm syndrome — one at a time, to be sufficient to change the system by either dropping out of it or from within it?
my answer, at least for today, is that the two are to work together — how can it be otherwise, it seems to me. it is beholden to see how the system creates a trauma induced schismogenesis that empowers the individual to heal from that. and with the healing the individual begins changing the system in small ways, grass roots ways, such as becoming a member of the school board, ignoring 'proper' school curricula, changing the fundamental workings of a small business or the management style of a bigger one.
anyway, thoughts for the day on the eve of christmas. and with that i wish you all the best of an a-biblical christ-amassing of family and community with joy of life.
all the best with what is changing at christmas, with we individuals with increasing coherence and personal agency renounce the systems of illegitimate authority and embrace the authentic authority of self within systems of community. be joyful because everything changes! with peace, respect, love and exuberant joy. feliz navidad.
🙏❤️🧘♂️🙌☯️🙌🧘♂️❤️🙏
p.s.: it came to me, on this near midnight clear, that you may appreciate my adding my comments to youtube. so, that i've done. and will do so going forward. goodnight.
Thanks for adding your comments here and on YT, Guy. I recognized your style before I recognized the email name.
I spent a long time trying to change the system. Even one little piece of it, like my local schools. From my experience, I found that impossible. I could have thrown all the money and time I had at it, and not added one minute to the school schedule.
What each of us can certainly do as individuals is challenge the old stories and change them into new ones. From my perspective now, I'd say it's better to go along with the system as long as you can make yourself happy within it, and change the stories. Then, when the time is right to change the system, you'll be ready with a new story.
But that's just where I've come to. Happy Christmas Guy, which I can say with no conflict whatsoever, since it's my conviction that you are the Christ ;-)
🙏❤️🙏. and back at you.
i don't disagree with the challenge of the individual changing the system! even the small one of a home owner's association from years ago was my experience of that. although the most pernicious experience i had was with the union i was 'forced' to join with being hired into the union shop. that was so malevolent that i would leave the meetings gagging with the passive aggressive mendacity of bullies hurling insults at each other. so...
and so with more experienced eyes i now see that your point of the toxic structure creating hurtful people is a valid. and that that seeing is now tempered with the interesting idea that undigested trauma traps the individual at the age of the trauma: it stops maturation. so, we are awash in a sea of hurt children-like creatures lashing out at each other. how to inspire in the hurt children their desire to take personal responsibility rather than casting stones and castigating the other as bully with the language and actions of a bully? yup. tough indeed!
i wonder to what extant has the convid completely over-the-top bullying that used both the malevolent energies of toxic / tyrannical male / female been a, or even the, 2x4 across our heads to jar us out from a comatose-like slumber of procrastination and deferred personal responsibility? was the convid a turning point of the system that will see itself collapse as more and more sleepers wake and take personal responsibility and remove blind and mostly unexamined trust in our authorities? it is truly a fascinating time to be alive!
time will tell. time for sleep. all around me the oaxacenos are blasting in christmas with fire works and big noise makers. at least for the last hour and this will likely continue for another hour.
again, all the best as expressions of christ.
There's a lot worth responding to... I guess you're right that I was using a rhetorical trick when I said "Are you really so sure?", although in my defence I wasn't conscious that I was doing that... I was copying something I remembered Carl Jung saying.
I'm flattered that you've made this video, and I will respond to it in greater detail. There is no question that you have much more historical knowledge than I do, and I'm not sure that I'll be able to respond soon to the finer points you raise - I'll have to look into a number of things, and I'm not sure how long that will take.
But if we are to clarify things a bit - because I know that we're on the same page ideologically - could you point to anything that Marvin Harris puts forward that you think is a misrepresentation. I was very impressed with his analysis, and I think that he presents some very interesting ideas... but he's not really declaring anything. He's presenting a novel interpretation which appears to clear up some of the most befuddling parts of the New Testament. If I have a bias here - it's this: I want to present the Christ as an anarchist revolutionary. And I think that the zealot-bandit military-messianic insurrectionist movement that was happening in the first century A.D. is fascinating history and lends itself well to an anarchist interpretation of the Christ Mythos. The fact that Judea was in open revolt against Rome at the exact time that Jesus is supposed to have live has been memory-holed and whitewashed, if you ask me.
Another question that I have for you is this: Can we agree that John the Baptist was a historical figure who was part of this revolutionary zealot-bandit military-messianic movement?
I'll have more to say in coming days... Thanks for the Signal Boost you've given me by making this post!
Excellent reply, Crow, and I'm so happy that you want to engage on this. Of all the possible rabbit holes, I think this holds the most hope and promise if we can dig a little deeper to what really happened.
I absolutely share your bias towards the Christ as an anarchist revolutionary movement. And there is HUGE significance to the context of the Judean revolt--which successfully kicked out Rome from Jerusalem for two years and was spreading like wildfire to other Roman colonies like Samaria. But here's where I would go you one further--it wasn't just memory-holed. The entire purpose of the Jesus story was to kill the Christ.
I'll leave it at that for the night. Tomorrow I'll do a post on the Christ and what I see as the real Christmas. But after that I'll go back to your original post, which I think had the Marvin Harris points, and do an episode responding in detail. I'm going to follow my format from Have a Better Argument so that I can try it out as an experiment in productive disagreement.
But maybe I should wait to disabuse you of Jesus until after the wedding! I don't want to get you in trouble with those catechism priests. They take religion VERY seriously in your town ;-) Feliz Navidad for all the baby Christs born tomorrow!
Okay... I think I follow you... Here's an analogy. If you ask anyone under the age of 16 in the U.S. these days about the Black Panthers, including black kids, they'll probably assume you're talking about the Hollywood movie... So has the propaganda machine succeeded in burying the history of the militant Black Liberationists who were the original Black Panthers? Quite possibly...
Are you saying that something similar happened with the Christ Mythos? Because if you are, I'm all ears... I think that's what Marvin Harris is suggesting as well, although he's a little understated about the political implications of what he's saying. I don't think he was really looking to draw lessons that could inform radical political movements... he was looking at the Christ Mythos through the lens of anthropology and trying to unravel an age-old mystery.
Pretty sure you'd love Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches, by the way. A classic! One of the most accessible books on anthropological theory you're likely to come across.
Tereza- rustling all the feathers! I didn’t watch the video and I don’t know if you expand on this, but I do remember the part about doing good and alleviating suffering and doing better by helping folks alleviate their own suffering from the book and I just think it’s a lovely concept and I dare a parallel to parenting- by helping my children learn how to achieve themselves, I alleviate future suffering on them. By learning how to be capable, I set them up for a less stressful life. Or so I hope.
Yes, that's a perfect extension of the idea, Tonika. Here's one example--it's so much easier to clean the house yourself than it is to get kids to do it (especially if your spouse is kinda like one of the kids when it comes to cleaning ... not to implicate anyone). It's a lot of suffering the first dozen times, perhaps. But once they resign themselves to doing it, they can't help but feel proud. They start seeing it clean and enjoying it. I know girls are different but even Cassandra, who's much more like a boy that way, found her niche in the really grungy, dirty jobs. And bathrooms also became her thing.
I love that you resonated with my definition of doing good. That really means a lot to me.
It takes special pride after a good bathroom clean! I have one boy who would just rather clean the bathroom real well and not do any other chore. I have another who likes doing “heavy lifting” so is always game for bringing in groceries, throwing out the trash, or moving furniture. Neither one is into dish washing. I made the mistake of not pressing them too hard on chores early on.
I’ll do better with the youngest. :)
From my little glimpses into your family, you're doing just fine with all three. They love you, they love each other, and they want the family to thrive. Your experiment in parenting doesn't need to be the same as mine. You're teaching lessons in resiliency I never thought of, or could have gotten away with. Your education ideas are brave and brilliant. Keep doing the Tonika! (to the tune of the timewarp again)
Well now that you’ve brought up a Rocky Horror reference, I’ll have it stuck in my head for the rest of the night, thank you very much!
Seriously though, thanks for throwing me some kindness about my parental ways. Struggling with keeping up (always tough around the holidays and right after) and this is a nice reminder that sometimes, sure, there is fumbling and mistakes, but sometimes I slay. We do the best we can.
Hi Tereza.
The quantity and quality of thought and comments are so overwhelming, my eptiaph is in danger of becoming "He read and thought a lot about Tereza's thoughts". 😂
Just a season's greeting here, and a thought. Maybe much of my failure to launch in Japan Inc. is due to my mistaken understanding of human nature. I thought that as an educator, I would do better by enabling others to alleviate the suffering of others, ad infinitum. Decades of trying, and about ¥500, might buy me a cup of coffee. Meh, it was fun while it lasted.
Falling back on a long time metaphor for real time feeling, Merry Christmas Tereza!
Has human nature caused your 'failure to launch,' as you call it? Or was it the system? From what you've told me, the only education valued in Japan is one that enables someone to get a job, preferably that pays well. All of the available time and money is sucked into that black hole, where people are competing against each other.
Under my system, anyone can teach and anyone can choose from whom they want to learn. If someone has a handful of students, they can make a living equal to the cost of housing. Or do something else agreeable that others value.
In this next year when we launch the RetroMetro simulation of my caret system, I think you should move in. Maybe on Apocaloptimist Lane, maybe start an adjacent Japan Junction. It would, I suspect, prove to you that your 'failure' is merely the sign of a healthy, sane, moral person 'failing' to thrive in a sick, insane, immoral system.
But in the between-time, I wish you, Steve, a warm and kind Christmas. I hope you recognize how well loved you are in the real world, and that you feel that from me.
Thank you Tereza. I needed that.
Alternative systems pop up like mushrooms here in Japan too.
But they disappear just as fast, leaving a lowest common denominator that seems to be more universal.
I can only wonder what and why because I observe them mostly as an outsider.
Happy holidays to you, your family, and friends Tereza.
And keep on keeping on. 🥰
Teresa... we agree on so much. I'll dispute, however, that Christians have done more harm than good. I'll start by quoting renowned historian Will Durant. Durant, who was not a Christian, wrote the following incisive statement in The Story of Civilization, Vol III: Caesar and Christ.
“The Christian evidence for Christ begins with the letters ascribed to Saint Paul. Some of these are of uncertain authorship; several, antedating A.D. 64, are almost universally accounted as substantially genuine. No one has questioned the existence of Paul, or his repeated meetings with Peter, James, and John; and Paul enviously admits that these men had known Christ in his flesh. The accepted epistles frequently refer to the Last Supper and the Crucifixion…. The contradictions are of minutiae, not substance; in essentials the synoptic gospels agree remarkably well, and form a consistent portrait of Christ. In the enthusiasm of its discoveries the Higher Criticism has applied to the New Testament tests of authenticity so severe that by them a hundred ancient worthies, for example Hammurabi, David, Socrates would fade into legend. Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus’ arrest, Peter’s denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospel. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature of the history of Western man.”
I'll continue by replying to myself...
Hello, Claudia! Thanks for starting out with how much we agree. I agree on that!
I would never make any generalization about Christians, who are all good people by my theology. My focus is whether the story of Jesus has done harm by causing good people to do bad things. The story of Jesus has empowered the Wholly Roaming Empire, as I call the church. The popes appointed the kings. They're the power behind the thrones. Colonization would have had no moral justification without the words, "Go out and subdue the nations." No matter how you interpret that, the invaders let it quell their conscience for whatever they did to those who were deemed to not have a soul.
Paul was the most hated figure in the Bible by the slaves, according to Frederich Douglas. Perhaps Noah was a contender. Paul's statements about slaves returning and submitting to their masters was read to them every Sunday. "Peter" gives the inheritance to rule to the popes, and creates a hierarchy, an inheritance order of archons. That power over others has caused more suffering than any other institution. I thought, perhaps marriage was the exception but the patriarchal power to own a wife or child comes straight from this twisted story, starting with Eve. So that has to be included.
The story that we're all the Christ can't be distorted into power over others. It's entirely beneficial. In your quote, it says 'Christ' repeatedly but only uses 'Jesus' referring to his arrest. So it negates any other concept of the Christ by making it the last name and identity of one historical figure, according to the story. That baby born tomorrow will not be the Christ, but will be born into original sin, a fallen outcast from Eden. Really?
Our mutual friend Diana gave me a copy of the Urantia text that's on my bookshelf. I read the beginning but didn't get to the part about Jesus. What it presents, however, are false dichotomies. I'm entertaining the possibility that the whole world only exists in our single Mind--that's not materialism and certainly not science. It's a rejection of hierarchy. If I'm willing to see myself as no better than you, it's a short synapse to see you as me in another form, and vice versa. It's spirituality that isn't based on superiority.
I happened to open to a passage in A Course in Miracles today that was titled "Christmas as the end of sacrifice." I'm going to read it into a post for tomorrow. I'll be interested in your thoughts because I feel that it gives a very different view of the Christ. Thanks, Claudia.
Then I will move on to a remarkable book that will enlighten you more than anything else you have ever read: The Urantia Book... the last third of which is a biography of Jesus and his importance to our planet. I'll snagged a longish sample from one of the last Chapters (Papers) in that book in what follows: Paper 195 After Pentecost Section 6. Materialism
Scientists have unintentionally precipitated mankind into a materialistic panic; they have started an unthinking run on the moral bank of the ages, but this bank of human experience has vast spiritual resources; it can stand the demands being made upon it. Only unthinking men become panicky about the spiritual assets of the human race. When the materialistic-secular panic is over, the religion of Jesus will not be found bankrupt. The spiritual bank of the kingdom of heaven will be paying out faith, hope, and moral security to all who draw upon it “in His name.”
No matter what the apparent conflict between materialism and the teachings of Jesus may be, you can rest assured that, in the ages to come, the teachings of the Master will fully triumph. In reality, true religion cannot become involved in any controversy with science; it is in no way concerned with material things. Religion is simply indifferent to, but sympathetic with, science, while it supremely concerns itself with the scientist.
The pursuit of mere knowledge, without the attendant interpretation of wisdom and the spiritual insight of religious experience, eventually leads to pessimism and human despair. A little knowledge is truly disconcerting.
At the time of this writing the worst of the materialistic age is over; the day of a better understanding is already beginning to dawn. The higher minds of the scientific world are no longer wholly materialistic in their philosophy, but the rank and file of the people still lean in that direction as a result of former teachings. But this age of physical realism is only a passing episode in man’s life on earth. Modern science has left true religion—the teachings of Jesus as translated in the lives of his believers—untouched. All science has done is to destroy the childlike illusions of the misinterpretations of life.
Science is a quantitative experience, religion a qualitative experience, as regards man’s life on earth. Science deals with phenomena; religion, with origins, values, and goals. To assign causes as an explanation of physical phenomena is to confess ignorance of ultimates and in the end only leads the scientist straight back to the first great cause—the Universal Father of Paradise.
The violent swing from an age of miracles to an age of machines has proved altogether upsetting to man. The cleverness and dexterity of the false philosophies of mechanism belie their very mechanistic contentions. The fatalistic agility of the mind of a materialist forever disproves his assertions that the universe is a blind and purposeless energy phenomenon.
The mechanistic naturalism of some supposedly educated men and the thoughtless secularism of the man in the street are both exclusively concerned with things; they are barren of all real values, sanctions, and satisfactions of a spiritual nature, as well as being devoid of faith, hope, and eternal assurances. One of the great troubles with modern life is that man thinks he is too busy to find time for spiritual meditation and religious devotion.
Materialism reduces man to a soulless automaton and constitutes him merely an arithmetical symbol finding a helpless place in the mathematical formula of an unromantic and mechanistic universe. But whence comes all this vast universe of mathematics without a Master Mathematician? Science may expatiate on the conservation of matter, but religion validates the conservation of men’s souls—it concerns their experience with spiritual realities and eternal values.
The materialistic sociologist of today surveys a community, makes a report thereon, and leaves the people as he found them. Nineteen hundred years ago, unlearned Galileans surveyed Jesus giving his life as a spiritual contribution to man’s inner experience and then went out and turned the whole Roman Empire upside down.
But religious leaders are making a great mistake when they try to call modern man to spiritual battle with the trumpet blasts of the Middle Ages. Religion must provide itself with new and up-to-date slogans. Neither democracy nor any other political panacea will take the place of spiritual progress. False religions may represent an evasion of reality, but Jesus in his gospel introduced mortal man to the very entrance upon an eternal reality of spiritual progression.
To say that mind “emerged” from matter explains nothing. If the universe were merely a mechanism and mind were unapart from matter, we would never have two differing interpretations of any observed phenomenon. The concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness are not inherent in either physics or chemistry. A machine cannot know, much less know truth, hunger for righteousness, and cherish goodness.
Science may be physical, but the mind of the truth-discerning scientist is at once supermaterial. Matter knows not truth, neither can it love mercy nor delight in spiritual realities. Moral convictions based on spiritual enlightenment and rooted in human experience are just as real and certain as mathematical deductions based on physical observations, but on another and higher level.
If men were only machines, they would react more or less uniformly to a material universe. Individuality, much less personality, would be nonexistent.
The fact of the absolute mechanism of Paradise at the center of the universe of universes, in the presence of the unqualified volition of the Second Source and Center, makes forever certain that determiners are not the exclusive law of the cosmos. Materialism is there, but it is not exclusive; mechanism is there, but it is not unqualified; determinism is there, but it is not alone.
The finite universe of matter would eventually become uniform and deterministic but for the combined presence of mind and spirit. The influence of the cosmic mind constantly injects spontaneity into even the material worlds.
Freedom or initiative in any realm of existence is directly proportional to the degree of spiritual influence and cosmic-mind control; that is, in human experience, the degree of the actuality of doing “the Father’s will.” And so, when you once start out to find God, that is the conclusive proof that God has already found you.
The sincere pursuit of goodness, beauty, and truth leads to God. And every scientific discovery demonstrates the existence of both freedom and uniformity in the universe. The discoverer was free to make the discovery. The thing discovered is real and apparently uniform, or else it could not have become known as a thing.
Our infinitely intelligent Creator (Preserver, Destroyer) knows our needs more deeply than we do. Thus, He, being so bountiful and merciful bestows upon us what we most need in abundance and what is of lesser importance/necessity is rare. Among the rarest of all things in CERTAINTY and overwhelmingly abundant is UNCERTAINTY. And yet the limited ego-mind leaps to place greater value on certainty and take uncertainty for granted. Wise? No. The means by which the desire for certainty is sought is by assuming/believing one has it. Delusional thinking. Embrace uncertainty!
As someone who went to Catholic grade school, HS and college, every time someone told me "we'll never know," they meant that I should accept that the infallible Pope and Bible DID know. My message, Ron, IS that we should embrace uncertainty, which you don't do.
You make a LOT of declarative statements about who God is: "Our infinitely intelligent Creator (Preserver, Destroyer)" who is "bountiful and merciful." And what "He" does (another certainty on your part): "knows our needs more deeply than we do" and "bestows upon us what we most need in abundance."
Then you call me a "limited ego-mind" that is not wise and has delusional thinking, because I need to embrace uncertainty. What you're really saying is that I shouldn't give facts and logic that contradict YOUR certainty. Physician, take thy own medicine.
Tereza, upon rereading my comment, I see how you may have taken the content as being directed toward you personally. However, that was not my intention. My commentary was meant as a general observation about human beings. The "declarative" descriptions about God are based upon my own convictions. I failed to make that point. I am sorry these failures on my part disturbed you. I apologize.
I wasn't disturbed by your statement, Ron. Why would I be? It's interesting that when women argue the logic and consistency of someone's statement, they're often seen as having an emotional reaction.
I didn't see it at all as directed towards me personally, other than an example of the point you were making. However, what you say is internally contradictory. You make statements of absolute assumed certainty "based upon [your] own convictions," make 'general observations' that people who don't agree with you are 'limited ego-minds,' not wise and have delusional thinking, and then tell them to 'embrace uncertainty.'
Some would apply the word hypocritical to that, but I think it's so ingrained that you don't recognize you're doing it. But now that I've pointed it out, do you agree that you're expressing certainty while telling others to embrace uncertainty?
I stand by my commentary on the value of certainty versus uncertainty. It has been my perspective since I was first exposed to it. As regards "limited ego-minds" they are by nature limited, mine and everyone's wit very few exceptions, like perhaps illumined saints. By "embrace uncertainty" was a suggestion based on its value.
I'm in full agreement with you on the value of uncertainty. My only dogma, the one belief I refuse to raise to question, is that I'm no better than anyone else. Everything else is up for debate.
When you say your statements are 'based on your own convictions,' the etymology of the word conviction means "mental state of being convinced or fully persuaded" and "firm belief, a belief held as proven". In other words, certainty. I'm arguing that our beliefs in systems and stories should be raised to uncertainty.
Merry Christmas, Tereza! I did not know how ti reach you via a private email message, so I decided to post here on this thread. This morning while having breakfast, I continued and finished reading a discourse, that got me thinking that I should share an excerpt that explained well something I was conversing about on a recent zoom chat. a couple of days ago. As I continued reading, it came to mind that the theme/subject of the discourse might interest you as it touches upon, I think, some aspects of what our exchange included. I will give you a link to it, if you are inclined to check it out. The title of the discourse is "The Nature Of the Ego and Its Termination, part 2, the Ego as an Affirmation of Separateness"; it is in volume 2 of "DISCOURSES" by Meher Baba. The link: https://www.discoursesbymeherbaba.org/volume2.pdf
page 58
May the New Year bring showers of blessings of all varieties to you and yours, and all receive a healthy soaking.
What I may hold as a conviction does not require certainty. I am fully open to hearing seemingly contradictory concepts and/or ideas that refine or deepen my conviction.
Tezza you write "The story of Jesus Christ was based on the life of a real flesh-and-blood person."
Why only one?
Apollonius of Tyana was a real person whose thought was used for instance.
http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/Nicaean_academies_of_Plato_Chrest_and_Jesus_Christ.htm
ABSTRACT Evidence is presented to substantiate the presence of at least a trinity of Christian Identity Frauds masquerading in the Academy of Plato during the 3rd century. (1,2,3) From the 4th century mention is resurrected of Porphyry's Christian Identity Fraud and the likelihood is explored that the Christian Presbyter Arius of Alexandria, is just another Identity Fraud in a pattern of similar evidence. (4,5) The events of the Council of Nicaea are reconstructed in such a manner as to narrate from the profane perspective, the heresy, the exile and the "damnatio memoriae" of Arius of Alexandria, a non christian theologian/philosopher associated with the Alexandrian academy of Plato c.324 CE. (6,7)
Stegiel, where did you find that quote? I had to reread to see if I could find it. It's the opposite of my point, which is that the story of Jesus is a literary invention written to destroy the Christ, which was an anti-imperial movement led by Judas the Nazarene. The story of Jesus, I suspect, caused 2000 more years of confusion about a God who requires sacrifice and suffering, rather than a God of love. But what you cite is interesting, and fits my theory, I think.
This text references Apollonius. And goes into the historic person of Jesus.
An article by Robert M. Price. http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_005.htm
When, long ago, I first learned that some theorized that Jesus had never existed as an historical figure, I dismissed the notion as mere crankism, as most still do. Indeed, Rudolf Bultmann, supposedly the arch-skeptic, quipped that no sane person could doubt that Jesus existed (though he himself came surprisingly close to the same opinion, as did Paul Tillich). For a number of years I held a more or less Bultmannian estimate of the historical Jesus as a prophet heralding the arrival of the eschatological Kingdom of God, an end to which his parables, faith healings and exorcisms were directed. Jesus had, I thought, predicted the coming of the Son of Man, an angelic figure who should raise the dead and judge mankind. When his cleansing of the temple invited the unforgiving ire of the Sadducee establishment, in cahoots with the Romans, he sealed his own doom. He died by crucifixion, and a few days later his disciples began experiencing visions of him raised from the dead. They concluded that he himself was now to be considered the Son of Man, and they expected his messianic advent in the near future.
From this eminently reasonable position (its cogency reinforced by the unfolding of the messiahship of Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson) I eventually found myself gravitating to that crazy view, that Jesus hadn’t existed, that he was mythic all the way down, like Hercules. I do not hold it as a dogma. I do not prefer that it be true. It is just that the evidence now seems to me to point that way. The burden of proof would seem to belong with those who believe there was an historical man named Jesus. I fully admit and remind the reader that all historical hypotheses are provisional and tentative. This one certainly is. And yet I do favor it.
https://greekreporter.com/2024/05/04/greek-jesus-christ-apollonius-tyana/
I will dredge it up from his citation. His thesis is that Constantine needed a new faith so he could sack the Pagan temples and break their power. He argues that the faith was built from existing traditions consolidated into the narrative of Jesus. Which given antiquity is not unreasonable. Adding to this is work on Platonism and the Hebrew Bible. https://vridar.org/series-index/russell-gmirkin-plato-and-the-hebrew-bible/
No, I mean where did you find the quote that I say "The story of Jesus Christ was based on the life of a real flesh-and-blood person." I would never conflate Jesus and Christ because I think they're polar opposite concepts. Jesus represents exclusivity and superiority as 'the ONLY begotten Son of God.' The Christ is inclusivity and the recognition that we're ALL begotten from God.
So it seems like you didn't read my article before you posted what you saw as disagreeing with me, and making up a quote from me to argue against. Your research is interesting, but it doesn't seem to come from a place of reciprocal respect when you don't even know my name, much less my position.
No I read. I do not think Jesus existed. I think the myth exists only after Constantine. In other words yes Christ is a symbol but the man no, a creation of Constantine’s scribes based on multiple traditions.
We agree then. And the only one who disagrees is the quote you attribute to me that I never wrote and says the opposite of what I did in the article.
Let me go back, because I believe it did. I will apologize if mistaken.
Tezza your quote in full and the part I cited is at bottom.
TWO QUESTIONS FOR SECULARISTS WHO BELIEVE THAT JESUS CHRIST IS A PURELY FICTIONAL CHARACTER
To those people, I have two questions.
Are you really so sure? Most people who believe that Jesus never existed don’t seem to have seriously investigated the question.
Which is more likely - that Jesus never existed, or that the Christ Mythos was based upon a true story which was subject to later distortions, embellishments, deletions, and additions?
I’ve taken an interest in this subject for a long time, and I have concluded that it is reasonable to assume that the story of Jesus Christ was based on the life of a real flesh-and-blood person, but many of the details of his life story are up for debate, including his actual name.