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This is a wise-sounding aphorism but also allows you to escape having to actually address even one of the actual points made.
I find this to be one of the worst things about the Bible. It decries using one's (presumably god-given) reasoning abilities and advocates instead just accepting divine commands because someone claims that's what they are.
I'm convinced the book of Jude, with all its red-faced fulminations, would never have made it into the NT canon if it had not consisted primarily of invectives that preemptively declare 100% of all dissenters from orthodoxy to be cartoon character villains. That the supposedly "good book" not only endorses but goads and encourages this kind of dissembling is morally reprehensible.
This is a wise-sounding aphorism but also allows you to escape having to actually address even one of the actual points made.
I find this to be one of the worst things about the Bible. It decries using one's (presumably god-given) reasoning abilities and advocates instead just accepting divine commands because someone claims that's what they are.
I'm convinced the book of Jude, with all its red-faced fulminations, would never have made it into the NT canon if it had not consisted primarily of invectives that preemptively declare 100% of all dissenters from orthodoxy to be cartoon character villains. That the supposedly "good book" not only endorses but goads and encourages this kind of dissembling is morally reprehensible.
This is a wise-sounding aphorism but also allows you to escape having to actually address even one of the actual points made.
I find this to be one of the worst things about the Bible. It decries using one's (presumably god-given) reasoning abilities and advocates instead just accepting divine commands because someone claims that's what they are.
I'm convinced the book of Jude, with all its red-faced fulminations, would never have made it into the NT canon if it had not consisted primarily of invectives that preemptively declare 100% of all dissenters from orthodoxy to be cartoon character villains. That the supposedly "good book" not only endorses but goads and encourages this kind of dissembling is morally reprehensible.
A religious hierarchy that warns people not to think and reason too much about their teachings is a dead giveaway that what they are teaching is just a pack of lies. Truth can stand up to reasoning and thinking all day but lies wither under the glare of inspection as to whether it is truth or not. The Church taught that Jesus was a real man but for centuries people asked, "Where's the proof? Where's the writings from secular historians that professed him to be real?" The Church's response was to burn people at the stake for asking such questions. Anyone who can stay within a religion that employs such reprehensible tactics ought to be on a couch with their analyst.
This is a wise-sounding aphorism but also allows you to escape having to actually address even one of the actual points made.
I find this to be one of the worst things about the Bible. It decries using one's (presumably god-given) reasoning abilities and advocates instead just accepting divine commands because someone claims that's what they are.
I'm convinced the book of Jude, with all its red-faced fulminations, would never have made it into the NT canon if it had not consisted primarily of invectives that preemptively declare 100% of all dissenters from orthodoxy to be cartoon character villains. That the supposedly "good book" not only endorses but goads and encourages this kind of dissembling is morally reprehensible.
How are you convinced?
Wisdom is always justified by her children, it is in other books as well, not just Jude.
The tone and attitude of the book is quite out of place, raging and weirdly carping. At least a lot of the content in the Bible makes the effort at soaring rhetoric. Jude is just slumming it. It doesn't seem to belong in holy writ. There was some controversy about it back in the day too, if I recall correctly. But I think it made the cut because it provides a lot of ammo for people who want to demonize / otherize any form of dissent or "weakness" of "the True faith" if you will. That was particularly important around the time of Nicea because some of the more persistent competing orthodoxies, particularly the gnostics, were still a good century away from being fully stamped out. Today, any such notions are fully externalized in other groups, which can be dispensed with via garden-variety stereotyping and dehumanization -- so Jude is something of an anachronism in a way. Still, I think it excuses such unseemly attitudes.
Another criticism I remember of Jude is that it quotes from extra-Biblical sources (The Book of Enoch and the Testament of Moses). Enoch in particular has a lot of fanciful / mythological material, it is said. Kind of odd citations in a supposedly inspired document.
Some early church authorities declared in "mediæ auctoritatis" (middle authority) material, but it eventually got the nod anyway.
He needed a vacation from all those folks pestering him for miracles, etc, etc.
Latest news - he's off to play golf in an alternate universe, and won't be back for a few millennia.
He needed a vacation from all those folks pestering him for miracles, etc, etc.
Latest news - he's off to play golf in an alternate universe, and won't be back for a few millennia.
It's okay, nobody would miss him. He never granted any miracles anyway. He's been AWOL for 2000 years so what's the difference?
Nice explanation via Movie clip, from Risen (2016)
This Roman tribune is a veteran of many battles and killed many people. However if you watch the movie, he told Pilate that all he wanted was a day without death. It shocked him that Jesus knew about his conversation with Pilate and what he truly wanted. Powerful scene. https://youtu.be/wUA-PKw0RzY
Or one might say, that to those who cannot perceive rainbows, endlessly explaining will never convince them that they exist. Best to leave them alone, and enjoy your rainbow.
Interview with Robert Monroe ("Journeys out of the Body"), on his explorations of the "other realm".
Though not focused on religious dogma, it supports the premise that there are "rainbows" and you can experience "rainbows". (And that one can exist independent of a body, which removes the great fear of death)
And lastly, for the technophiles, a NASA physicist and protege of Bob Monroe, gave a lecture at the Monroe Institute, about his "Big TOE" (Theory of Everything). BTW, Dr Thomas Campbell, was a Physicist not a metaphysicist, and helped with the instrumentation that they used to record Bob's "out of the body" experiences. Some of that information on brain frequencies was used to make "Hemi-Sync" recordings for impressing those brain waves on newbies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CL_bU4O0A4
(** Some nice explanations of the famous double slit experiment that showed light could be perceived as a wave or as a particle, but not both **)
If you're curious, go read the first book, "Journeys Out of the Body". Robert Monroe relates a tale of an encounter with "something" that was "the Great Spirit" (or a reasonable facsimile thereof). Others have corroborated what he witnessed by experiencing the same encounter.
(Note: He does not filter his journeys through any religious dogma. YMMV)
Nice explanation via Movie clip, from Risen (2016)
This Roman tribune is a veteran of many battles and killed many people. However if you watch the movie, he told Pilate that all he wanted was a day without death. It shocked him that Jesus knew about his conversation with Pilate and what he truly wanted. Powerful scene. https://youtu.be/wUA-PKw0RzY
Or one might say, that to those who cannot perceive rainbows, endlessly explaining will never convince them that they exist. Best to leave them alone, and enjoy your rainbow.
Interview with Robert Monroe ("Journeys out of the Body"), on his explorations of the "other realm".
Though not focused on religious dogma, it supports the premise that there are "rainbows" and you can experience "rainbows". (And that one can exist independent of a body, which removes the great fear of death)
And lastly, for the technophiles, a NASA physicist and protege of Bob Monroe, gave a lecture at the Monroe Institute, about his "Big TOE" (Theory of Everything). BTW, Dr Thomas Campbell, was a Physicist not a metaphysicist, and helped with the instrumentation that they used to record Bob's "out of the body" experiences. Some of that information on brain frequencies was used to make "Hemi-Sync" recordings for impressing those brain waves on newbies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CL_bU4O0A4
(** Some nice explanations of the famous double slit experiment that showed light could be perceived as a wave or as a particle, but not both **)
If you're curious, go read the first book, "Journeys Out of the Body". Robert Monroe relates a tale of an encounter with "something" that was "the Great Spirit" (or a reasonable facsimile thereof). Others have corroborated what he witnessed by experiencing the same encounter.
(Note: He does not filter his journeys through any religious dogma. YMMV)
I think what you're saying here is that people who either die or have mystical experiences experience a wide variety of paranormal phenomena completely unrelated to Jesus. When somebody says, "I saw Jesus when I died" nobody ever asks, "How did you know it was Jesus? Nobody knows what he looked like. The millions of pics of him are all based on Dark Ages and Medieval drawings and paintings which came out of the minds of the artists. I'll bet Mystic had an experience with a Jesus that looked just like this:
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What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
