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The point Christ was trying to drive home with that text, was that there will be many that claim to be followers of Christ but they have no real love of heaven as much as they seek the rewards of heaven. They would do those things out of a selfish desire to say "look at me, look at how righteous I am".
True, but the point is also that merely not sinning can itself be sin if god does not get enough love from it. If you don't see that as dysfunctional, I don't know how to open your eyes.
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Originally Posted by HalfNelson
God knows that we are powerless on our own, all he asks is that we ask Him for help, because the choice has to be OURS. God has made His choice, and it is that EVERYONE be saved. If you want to boil down judgement to only two classes of people, it won't be God dictating who was good/evil. You will have those that lived their lives essentially saying to God "thy will be done", and to all others God will say "thy will be done". God is willing to save all who are willing to be saved.
We have a good deal of power, and the responsibility that goes along with it. I used to buy the lowly-worm-without-god proposition, with all its faux humility, but the flip side of it is that one is "raised into the heavenlies in Christ", and all that "positional truth" nonsense. It is ultimately self-serving while pretending to humility.
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Originally Posted by HalfNelson
God does not want people serving Him out of fear. That is one of the points behind the earlier comment I made about the Matthew text you quoted. God's goal is to bring an end to sin. Eventually sin will be destroyed, but He desperately wants to save every sinner from sin.
Mortals cannot afford "eventually". If he wants to end sin / evil / suffering, let him do it. If he can't, then he either doesn't care to, or isn't able to. I have witnessed too much unfixable human suffering, and collectively throughout history, humanity has witnessed too much (if indeed, any at all should be acceptable). All of that has already occurred and cannot be taken back as it is.
God, being omnipotent, was capable of creating a world without suffering or at the very least he is capable of removing the causes of suffering here and now without the need to enact a drama for the benefit of the "cloud of witnesses". He can leave them on an alternate timeline if he feels the need.
The idea that this would violate free will is nonsense. It is based on disordered thinking. First, evil is not needed to appreciate good; there are still relative levels of good that can be used to appreciate different states of goodness, even if evil is removed. Second, there is still plenty of freedom of choice within a world without suffering or "temptation" (which is nothing more than being made to feel bad about ones own human weaknesses). I would love to choose between good, better and best, without having unthinkable, horrible, painful and tolerable added to the mix, and often, good, better and best omitted. Suffering is not entirely self inflicted, it is often forced on us. When it is self inflicted, it is often just human frailty anyway.
A close friend of mine is an alcoholic. Even if you don't understand the mechanisms of addiction and see this as simply bad choices, the proclivity of those choices is simply a product of other wounds and scars that were themselves unchosen, simple products of the random family they were born into. Where was the free will in that? Free will cuts both ways, regardless of whether you believe it truly even exists.
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Originally Posted by HalfNelson
Essentially hellfire is temporary, its results will be permanent. The sinners lost, won't be in torment or agony forever, they will simply be dead forever. there is no consciousness in death, no pain, no suffering, no knowledge of anything. It is ceasing to exist.
And that is a bad thing?
The dead know no want, disappointment, suffering or heartache. I was that way before I was alive. What is the problem then? If that is your eschatology then I have no problem with it. It is no different than what most atheists think likely concerning death.
Perhaps God was not responsible for their choice but he was responsible for the consequence, which to my understanding, was not a natural consequence.
I agree. The argument Nelson uses only works if God is as subject to the forces of nature as we are. Even then, it wouldn't work, as nobody is forcing God to decide to punish those who 'reject Him'. Why is it so important that we bow and scrape that god decides - nobody is forcing him to do this - not even natural forces - to dish out punishments if we don't?
On the other hand, I can understand that we deal with the consequences of our own actions, but that not only would be the case if there was no god, but actually works better if there isn't.
Original sin is simply a marketing tool for religion. If someone felt that living a good life alone was sufficient for eternity in heaven, it would severely threaten the church's power. But if we are all born as sinners, now we need the church for salvation.
Original sin is sadistic nonsense designed to control you.
Excellent essay, Mystic...on page 5.
Just excellent.
Thank you for taking the time to share with us.
Thank you, Miss Hepburn . . . there is such investment in the traditional views on both sides that it is difficult to penetrate the intransigence and get any intellectual traction. The pros and antis have such vested interest in their arguments and counter-arguments they have no time for any other views.
It is all about the evolution of our consciousness a long with the evolution of our brains capabilities for consciousness.
I'll go along with that ...
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Spiritual evolution is all about education . . . or as Paul called it edification. I hate to be a broken record about this this . . . but there is nothing in our universe that is created fully mature or fully evolved. There is an evolution and maturation sequence for everything. This applies to our soul (consciousness) as well.
... but now you're getting out on a bit of a limb. Why are you suddenly introducing a thing called "spiritual evolution"? I have no problem with the concept that humanity is arduously clawing its way out of a very deep well of ignorance and superstition, both about the physical world and the mastery of its mental and emotional landscapes. I can even accept the speculation that there is some separate spiritual component of maturity; I think the difference between us is that I don't assume it and don't subscribe to it as even hypothesis unless it can be substantiated in some way.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
In the story of Genesis, most religious interpreters would have us believe, God became angry with us because we did not control our animal body and did what we were forbidden to do. This silly idea of God getting angry over an apple, symbolic, sexual or otherwise, is an excellent example of what can be achieved through interpreting childhood as though it were adulthood! The Genesis stories simply capture our primordial consciousness (understanding) of the beginning of human life and chronicle the universal basic experiences (lessons) of human development.
Legends about the fall have long been interpreted allegorically as you are above, and not so much in terms of "spiritual infancy" per se as in terms of the problems associated with humanity acquiring self-awareness, such as loss of innocence and the discovery of shame.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
It is common knowledge that each and every human being must experience and repeat the entire pattern of human development. Each individual must learn everything for himself with the aid of his parents or society. Thus, the womb existence is a repetition of the evolution into a human being, and the various stages of fetal development mirror that evolution. The fetus even appears to have gills like a fish at one stage. The birth represents the seeding of a soul, the breathing into man's nostrils of the breath of life (Atman, Adamah). Infancy represents Eden, with parents as the all-providing God, and so on through maturity. "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be."
I'd suggest that actually the breath of life represents birth and Eden represents loss of innocence -- rather backwards from what you are suggesting. "Breath of Life" and "the fall" are metaphors we have devised to encapsulate and represent real life milestones, not just of persons, but of societies.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
This verse does not confirm the absurd notion that we were made evil by Adam and Eve or that we are intrinsically evil. It says we are evil because of our species youth (spiritual immaturity). Only by interpreting this passage in the way being proposed does it make any sense. Otherwise the passage would be suggesting that God won't punish man BECAUSE he is evil!
That would indeed be a way to make the passage more sensible, though it creates a problem as big as the one that it solves, which is, is god so fallible that he misjudged and misunderstood his own creation by punishing humanity via the flood? If it's ridiculous to suggest that god would not punish humanity because it was simply too immature to be fully responsible, then why did he do it in the first place?
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
The Bible is a source book and chronicle of our species' spiritual evolution . . . but it only describes our ancient ancestors. Religions have seen to it that our spiritual evolution stagnated at that level for over 2000+ years now. It is well past the time to stop being spiritual primitives.
I see no reason to see it as a "chronicle". It is a set of musings and archetypal stories that attempt to describe the journey of humanity from a particular religious viewpoint; I see no reason to attach the word "spiritual" to that. What I feel religion has done is not to stagnate us spiritually, they have done something far more real, which is to stagnate us socially, conceptually, emotionally, and existentially.
I'll go along with that ...
... but now you're getting out on a bit of a limb. Why are you suddenly introducing a thing called "spiritual evolution"? I have no problem with the concept that humanity is arduously clawing its way out of a very deep well of ignorance and superstition, both about the physical world and the mastery of its mental and emotional landscapes. I can even accept the speculation that there is some separate spiritual component of maturity; I think the difference between us is that I don't assume it and don't subscribe to it as even hypothesis unless it can be substantiated in some way.
Not much of a limb, mordant. Things spiritual are things conscious . . . it is their "substance" as Spirit (a new energy form distinct from our body) that underlies the the limb I am out on. I suspect that you tend to see it as an illusion and insubstantial from the perspective of your brain producing fleeting thoughts . . . but I see it from the overall perspective of a reality of myriad energy forms. Our Spirit or Self is a consciousness energy form distinct and unique from our material body. It has an evolution that parallels that of the body that produces it . . . but distinct from it. This is hard to see if we stay within the confines of our own thoughts without stepping outside of them to take a more objective perspective. Thinking about thinking and the product of thinking is not something we tend to do normally or easily.
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Legends about the fall have long been interpreted allegorically as you are above, and not so much in terms of "spiritual infancy" per se as in terms of the problems associated with humanity acquiring self-awareness, such as loss of innocence and the discovery of shame.
This is consistent with the failure to acknowledge the evolution of spiritual awareness (consciousness). The phrases "loss of innocence" and "shame" tend to see it only from the perspective of an adult fully evolved consciousness . . . ie., interpreting infancy as adulthood. There seems to be little understanding of the need for precursor states of consciousness to enable the acquisition of more elaborate and advanced states of understanding.
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I'd suggest that actually the breath of life represents birth and Eden represents loss of innocence -- rather backwards from what you are suggesting. "Breath of Life" and "the fall" are metaphors we have devised to encapsulate and represent real life milestones, not just of persons, but of societies.
You are confusing the initial state of Eden with the all-providing God (parents for a human infant) with the end state of Eden AFTER the first lesson . . . learning to know about Good and Evil.
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That would indeed be a way to make the passage more sensible, though it creates a problem as big as the one that it solves, which is, is god so fallible that he misjudged and misunderstood his own creation by punishing humanity via the flood? If it's ridiculous to suggest that god would not punish humanity because it was simply too immature to be fully responsible, then why did he do it in the first place?
It creates a problem for the man-attributed attributes of God . . . the Omni's. There is no reason whatsoever to require those attributes of our God other than human vanity and hubris. Our God is our God whatever attributes He has. The evolutionary odyssey (physical and spiritual) that we are on as a species is no less understandable or arduous because we think our God should have been capable of making it less so.
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I see no reason to see it as a "chronicle". It is a set of musings and archetypal stories that attempt to describe the journey of humanity from a particular religious viewpoint; I see no reason to attach the word "spiritual" to that. What I feel religion has done is not to stagnate us spiritually, they have done something far more real, which is to stagnate us socially, conceptually, emotionally, and existentially.
I see that the word spiritual is unnecessarily confusing the discussion. Musings, legends, myths, oral traditions, stories, historical chronicles, on the topic of God are ALL products of consciousness (hence spiritual). They are the cognitive "fossils" that reflect the spiritual evolution of our consciousness just as the fossil bones reflect the physical evolution of our bodies. We are largely in agreement about what religion has stagnated, mordant. it is simply a matter of semantics. The social, cultural etc. stagnation is attributable to the spiritual immaturity of the ancient religious constructs adhered to as a sign of faith in God. Revering as the word of God the ancient ignorance and superstitions of our primitive ancestors from 2000 - 4000+ years ago is a travesty of human vanity and hubris for which the religious leaders carry a heavy burden. They have been a stumbling block to spiritual maturity . . . NOT an aid.
well the adam and eve stories and noah's ark are good ones.
original sin is all about value. theres no value in anything not earned and gained for self worth all including a healthy ego.
its a condition necessary in order to establish a value . so the teaching in the adam and eve story is not to point out that we are sinners -that is defeatist, its a condition, people fully know they are not perfect. the more a suggestion tries to say so, the more it says not so...its a suggestion ( need.
its in the recognizing of a setting where the unique individual can become a self understood unique entity, alongside the many unique experience's each have. very simple, the only problem or arguing issue is in the translating of something which can fail, and i don't think that is the initiative, failure,a god would want to hang on to what has been put out .
Last edited by alexcanter; 12-08-2013 at 06:13 PM..
well the adam and eve stories and noah's ark are good ones.
original sin is all about value. theres no value in anything not earned and gained for self worth all including a healthy ego.
its a condition necessary in order to establish a value . so the teaching in the adam and eve story is not to point out that we are sinners -that is defeatist, its a condition,
its in the recognizing of a setting where the unique individual can become a self understood unique entity, alongside the many unique experience's each have. very simple, the only problem or arguing issue is in the translating of something which can fail, and i don't think that is the initiative, failure,a god would want to hang on to what has been put out, dividends lets say, mutually funding is a popular way to go everywhere, its a portfolio issue.
Your posts have not become any more coherent under this new screen name. I still cannot follow your thoughts.
Teachings are generally for new people, that means people from three to four feet in height.
Also they need to understand
Explanations for this issue if more then a hundred words from adult to youngster fails the grade automatically.
If a youngster cannot fully grasp a full explanation right away, its the wrong explanation.
youngsters or new believers are interested in being good, they are not interested in being bad if you have their att. Praise is import with the youngsters. If the early people did not have the youngsters att, then how did we get here ? iow you would think with some ideas the early man was a pack of out of control creatures. Abstract thinking and the quality in some is superior to what man comes up with today. Religion which is also politics if organized ( from a Head O ,) has nothing to do with any of it.
these things speak to timeless issues to begin with.
All it does is explain the "setting for the youngster and opportunity to be good" thats it, It confirms what they are beginning to understand in their early lives as people and choice. Choice is new to the kids.
The one question that seems good was the complaint that if god knows all, how could it be anything honorable to create a person who is only going to fail and be miserable in this life and the next . thats a good question but for myself in opinion only a bit much as a project question, because of some of whats already been said in reply, and a few other things as to be expected with how opinions go.
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Last edited by alexcanter; 12-09-2013 at 02:40 AM..
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