The Gospels are Myths (and other obvious observations)

[Tuno]

This kind of flowery talk may wash in New Age circles – where belief in the power of “transpersonal awareness” is the basis of books, lectures, and lots of other scams to syphon money out of suckers – but what it boils down to is that you’re taking one particular state of consciousness and ascribing all sorts of significance to it that it doesn’t deserve.

Anyone with even a little experience in things like meditation, for example, will know how easy it is to get the mind to slip into different states of consciousness. But these different states of consciousness aren’t any more “special” than the state of consciousness you can get into by having too many glasses of wine or the one you can get into by exercising beyond your usual limit.

Almost anything you do that is out of the ordinary will produce states of consciousness out of the ordinary. Sometimes, these states of consciousness come with blissful feelings and funky daydreams. But they’re not evidence that anything divine or magical is happening to you, no matter how much the New Age movement wants you to believe otherwise as you continue to fill its pockets.

Thanks, AT, I very much appreciate the beauty of flowers. And if beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, then…

As for transpersonal awareness, your assessment of most of what is “out there” is correct. I completely agree. But as to that “one particular state of consciousness and ascribing all sorts of significance to it that it doesn’t deserve,” which “one” are you talking about, and have you experienced it? If yes, then I’m guessing it is not the “one” state I’m talking about because your language regarding it would be informed by it in terms of necessary specifics you don’t include in your descriptions. If not, then you don’t know, and are conjecturing about a place you haven’t been yet, and assume you know about. I’m talking about the difference between book learning or conjecture and experience. That is natural. We haven’t all experienced everything, and most of what we have is only through the lens of the limited rational subject/object oriented mind we have developed up to the stage you are at, which, as I said, is in advance of most religionists.

As for meditation, I have had some 45 years of experience with it, both as a variety of practices and as an object of study. I even had an instructive experience that entailed meditating while hooked up to a variety of electronic monitors. The particular form I was using during that experiment precipitated a change in me that, when I started it, probably saved both my kid’s lives, as I was on the verge of becoming abusive. The change was so drastic that my friends noticed and my wife of that time became a practitioner and continues to this day, finding it very beneficial in many way. Does this mean we found God through meditation? No. It means that some meditation can have a psychophysiological effect. That is documented.

I have also had the requisite amounts of alcohol and other substances to alter my awareness in significant ways. I do not claim that those led me to God or anywhere in particular other than some states that were entertaining, dangerous, or both. I have also experienced “the zone” as derived from intense athletic competition. God? No.

You say that “Almost anything you do that is out of the ordinary will produce states of consciousness out of the ordinary.” And that is correct. I love to paint walls, and “cutting in” is my great delight, as it puts me into a mode of relaxed concentration, a moving meditation, if you will. God? No.

And I’ve had my share of blissful states and funky daydreams. God? No. Magic? Nearest thing I’ve experienced to that is NLP when dealing with phobias and other unfortunate states. So you might gather that I have some training in psychology, as well. God? No.

But none of that is what I’m referring to. And I have no agenda for “proving” to you what you can only see for yourself if you do the work, which clearly you haven’t fulfilled, and from your language I deduce you have not attempted with sincerity or your statement would be inclusive of some factors you seem to be unaware of. What I speak of is ineffable, unnamable, and experienceable. It has been so and been recorded as having been so since the dawn of history. And it has nothing to do with religion or “new ageism.” It is just about what you actually are beyond your thinking about what you think you are. Like Taj Mahal said on band 2 of one album; “Take a giant step–outside your mind.”

And lastly, thanks for your concern about filling the pockets of an amorphous non entity. I don’t do that.

Hey, I like your quote from TJ. He is one of my favorites. Refer to him often.

 

[Windfish]

I’m not sure what your sources are but I’m afraid you will be disappointed concerning references to your messiah and early Christians in the Talmud.

see: talmud.faithweb.com/articles/jesusnarr.html

It may not have been the Talmud. I am unfamiliar with Jewish texts, so I just assumed it was. I was reading about this text in R.T. France’s The Evidence for Jesus, but the name of this text eludes me right now.

 

[StrawberryJam]

It would be even more odd - in fact absurd - if God had not selected one particular tribe to be the Chosen People from whom the Son of Man was to bring the Good News to the entire world. Nor does the selection of the Jews imply that there is no truth in the teaching of other religions…

Selecting one tribe over another is an act of partiality.
Partiality is absurd.

No matter what kind of sugar coating is put on it, it reamains absurd.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

Selecting one tribe over another is an act of partiality.
Partiality is absurd.

No matter what kind of sugar coating is put on it, it reamains absurd.

May you elaborate why exactly you think it absurd?

For the record, I’m no in the discussion, just watching from a distance. Don’t know enough about the subject.

 

[4Horsemen]

Agreed. Good Job.

I’m hoping to relate that prophecies from the O.T. were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. On another thread I was excoriated for using a circular argument, that because I’m trying to prove an asssertion from the bible, it’s wrong to be using the bible as a basis for it. However, the bible (both O.T. and N.T.) is a collection of books. So there are more than one book that I am basing the argument upon.

Also, I went to a special exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible at the museum a few months ago. I saw the earliest books of the bible and other writings, most in fragment form, but at least the book of Isaiah was whole and said to be almost identical to the copy we have now. It is said that the Scrolls were copied scrupulously by the Essenes (a religious group) from the years 200 B.C. to 68 A.D. Some bibles of antiquity at the exhibit were fabulously decorative. I found a website that gives 25 different facts about the DSS. Following is the last one:

1. The Dead Sea Scrolls enhance our knowledge of both Judaism and Christianity. They represent a non-rabbinic form of Judaism and provide a wealth of comparative material for New Testament scholars, including many important parallels to the Jesus movement. They show Christianity to be rooted in Judaism and have been called the evolutionary link between the two.

Here is the link: centuryone.com/25dssfacts.html

 

[StrawberryJam]

May you elaborate why exactly you think it absurd?

For the record, I’m no in the discussion, just watching from a distance. Don’t know enough about the subject.

Marc,

Let’s turn it around. Is there a basis to **not be **inclinced to be partial to a specific ethnic culture?
What would we call that?

 

[AntiTheist]

But as to that “one particular state of consciousness and ascribing all sorts of significance to it that it doesn’t deserve,” which “one” are you talking about, and have you experienced it? If yes, then I’m guessing

Yes, you’re guessing. That’s precisely the problem here. You guess that everybody who experiences these states of consciousness – which are typically marked by profound bliss, a feeling of “absorption,” and an absence of the self – has to go into loopy rants about the “ineffable” or else they experienced the wrong state of consciousness.

You’re guessing, in short, that everyone has to react the same way that you do – and then you ironically proceed to lecture me on “getting out of the mind.”

I’ll tell you a secret: all experience is ineffable, in the sense that words cannot adequately describe direct experience in full and must necessarily falsify it in order to enable communication.

some meditation can have a psychophysiological effect.

Yes, obviously so. Eating a big lunch when you’re hungry also has a psychophysiological effect. So does undergoing extremely stressful situations. So does virtually every other aspect of human experience.

The fact that you happen to like one particular brand of psychophysiological effect or that you found one brand to be particularly useful to you doesn’t really demonstrate much else.

Anyway, I’m not trying to pick on you or anything – you seem to not be making any supernatural claims about all of this stuff. I’m just pointing out that effects generated in your brain don’t demonstrate anything outside of your own brain.

 

[Donald_W]

Really, isn’t that what happens anyway? Mankind is, say, 40K years old as Homo sap. Two thousand years ago, “Christianity” starts. Today, about a sixth of the population is nominally Catholic, statistically half of those not really fully practicing, or at odds with some fundamental tenet such as transubstantiation or dogma such as birth control. Serendipitously, I just found 14 major creation myths from different cultures, the Abrahamic being only one of them. So there is a “wedge” of Catholics in the population from 0 around 1CE to about, nominally, one billion today, but about half that given deviation from Teaching. And most Catholics are now in the lesser educated Southern hemisphere as Catholic population by% in the US, and Europe, I suspect, decline in lay and clerical numbers. See here.

The practicing Catholics I know constitute a variety of belief systems that loosely agree on some points of the mainline teaching of the Church, and having gone through the Catholic school system through high school, I know darned well that there were few who are truly devout “traditional” Catholics and all those mostly continued in their disparate paths to this day, as far as I know. That is not even to mention the many psychologically bizarre groups claiming to be Catholic such as “Los Penitentes.” So whatever “strength” of numbers the Church claims, I personally have my doubts about it.

We can add to that that we know from the early days and the writings of the Church Fathers that the first task the Church had was to distinguish itself from the paganism that they admitted it was hard to tell themselves apart from. The ones who admitted to the similarities were in many cases conveniently anathematized. As for the body of the Church, it grew in this differentiation by proceeding with everything from slander and discreditation, through book burnings and bannings of cults, to downright death camp pogroms of non-Christians. All this got a boost when it became politically expedient in what, the third century? to be Christian by order of the Emperor. Now there is an holy, divinely sponsored advertising campaign to admire.

Let us go further and visit some of the great Saints. Eliminating all the ones in the roster who were imaginary, and discounting ones that were possibly wonderful people, the really great ones were fundamentally mysitics. If you read their words dispassionately they have transcended the form of the Church, having gone “direct,” one might say. And in fact, their statements are very uncomfortably identical with the words of mystics from other traditions, and even more uncomfortably to the words of men and women to this day who have arrived independently at nearly exactly similar conclusions through means other than devotional. If one reads such works as Love Poems from God, edited by Daniel Ladinsky, the introduction to Basic Self Knowledge by Harry Benjamin, The New Man by Maurice Nicoll, and many, many others, this becomes pretty clear even without having come to the fruition of the interior exercise of self observation as recommended from ancient times.

That Stream of congruently proponing mystics, the Saints and Sages of the ages, and “accidentals” have been with us from time immemorial. So for my part, I contend both from experience and study that God is everywhere and always available as Divine Self to those willing to go “beyond the mind” through difficult work, which includes seeing through any particular religious paradigm one finds themselves in, or through Grace. Let us again remember here the last days of St Thomas Aquinas, and his statements about his own work, which statements are not dissimilar from that of other Sages upon their physical demise. There is excellent and practical reason for such remarks.

The Way of that Stream includes everyone at all times, and is based on what you might in Catholicism call being “made in the Image and Likeness of God.” In other words, the facts of the matter are interiorly present always and everywhere to each one as the structure of Soul. And this is why, my dear friend, I contend, again from experience with my own seeking at the time of my life altering/altaring experience, that faith as adamantized habit can be a mental obstruction to actual spiritual progress. Think, please, about the phenomenally momenteous tendency we have as humans to maintain our sense of being “right.” It is far more pervsive than one could imagine, and why it has always been said by Sages to “know thyself.” And again, this is why it often takes a shock to dispace habit in favor of receptivity to actuality, and why it is used in many mystical disciplines.

Having had the shock, and re-examining the structure of the Gospels, a number of things become clear about why the Church is the way it publicly is, and why it teaches what it does. But especially it becomes clear why there constantly needs to be the statement made that the actions of the members of the Church do not represent the teaching of the Church. The proponents of what you might name, though it is unnamable, as the Perennial Philosophy, have never had need to make such a statement. That would be impossible, given what it is.

I don’t expect you to agree. But it is a perspective consistent within itself, as is the story of the Church from within its own doctrine. Only thing is, the story I propose spans a wider and deeper comprehension of Relationship with the Divine and even includes congruency with the Identity statements of both the OT and NT. So go figure. At least it is a darned interesting tale, and it works and has worked for me these past 45+ years with increasing grace, practicality, and elegance.

 

[twb1621]

Yes, of course. For example, I have asked myself why I don’t believe in the Hindu gods or the Zoroastrian gods. And the answer to this question is that I see no good reason or evidence to think that they are real. It’s exactly the same answer I would give to the question of why I don’t believe in any other entity.

No, you’re misreading me. I don’t think it’s a “good thing” for things to have physical attributes. I think that things that exist are things that manifest and affect the physical world in detectable ways. That is, in fact, what “exist” means.

If something “exists,” but it does not affect the physical world in any way at all that can be detected by anyone, then for all intents and purposes, it does not exist at all.

For example: if I tell you that I have a pet dragon that is completely intangible and incorporeal and does not affect the world in any way whatsoever that any person can detect…what does it mean when I say that my dragon “exists”? Isn’t my intangible, incorporeal dragon indistinguishable from something that doesn’t exist at all?

I’m not sure on what basis you make this claim, but I’m willing to give you a try: go on and name something that (you think) I believe without sufficient evidence or reason, and I’ll explain why you’re wrong.

No. You can make up an unfalsifiable story that explains away all the inconsistencies if you want, but that doesn’t mean it must be the conclusion in any way, shape, or form.

At any rate, let’s consider the possibility that all cultures approach the same god in different ways (the blind men and the elephant, right?). Well, some of these cultures come away with the message that cows are sacred; some come away with the message that it’s wrong to have sex unless someone from the tribe speaks some magic words over the union; another culture comes away with the message that blood sacrifice is what their god digs.

In other words: these different cultures are still getting conflicting messages that are mutually exclusive. This tells us something important: it tells us that people can be wrong about this “spiritual experience” stuff.

If it’s possible to be wrong, what makes you think that any of these cultures actually are in contact with a supernatural being?

So are you then saying that those who believe in the existence of God, even though they may have misconceived notions of God, are wrong to believe there exists a God as a supernatural being and to search for a relationship with him? Are you saying you believe no God exists? I believe you realize you can not say that credibly because it would require evidence to say God does not exist.

The fact that man in all his social diversity has a general recognition of the existence of a supernatural being or God, is strong intrinsic recognition. Common sense offers valid recognition that man with no interpersonal relationship in the form of communication has established his own methods of acknowledgement and or worship to that god based on that man’s culture such as cows as you mentioned, and what he holds of highest value is not beyond rational understanding of why certain cultures choose their ways of recognition. These selections of methods of recognition are in fact based on cultural values, not messages from God. The fact that only one people were commissioned by God to deliver the Truth of God to all and that many people such as yourself still choose to follow their own opinions, does not invalidate the existence of God, only supports man’s freedom to believe in the message delivered or turn away from it. Even Hinduism which possesses a wide variety of divergent views is for the greater part monotheistic in that Hindus explain that their gods are various forms of a single Supreme Being.

Judaism Was the one faith according to ancient history that formed of the direct intervention of God who chose the Jews as His people to “represent” the True God to all man and in the process provided His Divine guidance through the prophets. This is not to say all other prophets outside the Jewish people were false, and many reflect the same or similar foretellings in some cases (not all), but after the Jews turned from God at times throughout their history, God proclaimed through numerous prophets over numerous centuries the coming of the Messiah, the Savior, not only offering salvation of the Jews but of all man. It was there unique commission to present the True God to the rest of the world. Who accepted it was not their responsibility.

Now you can question why should the Jewish prophets be acknowledged as the prophets of God above all the others, and it simply can be answered that it was the prophets of Judaism through their historically recorded faith that expressed not only a direct relationship with God who identified Himself as who He is, but further provided the Messiah to accomplish what He promised and to fulfill 1000 years of His Word, that being the Christ, Jesus.

Continued next post…

 

[twb1621]

Yes…

The facts or evidence as you like to refer to is in the fulfillment of the prophecies Jesus completed, not only as are recognized to date, but are still being recognized and counted. For a period of approximately 1000 years prior to His birth these prophecies were made and examples of the ratios of improbability for any one person to be able to fulfill even the slightest number of them are following:

“How strong is this evidence? Consider… a. There are at least 330 prophecies in the OT fulfilled in Jesus Christ! 1) Twenty-nine (29) were fulfilled in one day! 2) Such prophecies were spoken at various times by many different people during the ten centuries from 1500 B.C. to 500 B.C. b. The science of probabilities demonstrates that it is nigh to impossible Jesus fulfilled these prophecies by coincidence 1) In one study (by Peter Stoner), eight (8) prophecies were considered: a) The likelihood of anyone fulfilling just these eight by chance was calculated to be 1 in 10 to the 17th power b) This would be like finding on the first try, while blindfolded, a marked silver dollar in a pile of silver dollars two-feet high covering the entire state of Texas! 2) In another study (also by Peter Stoner), forty-eight (48) prophecies were considered: a) The likelihood of a coincidence was 1 in 10 to the 157th power! b) How big a number is 10 to the 157th power? 1] Counting at the rate of 250 a minute… 2] It would take you 19 million times 19 million times 19 million years to count such a number! c) Remember, that is just calculating the chance of any one man coincidentally fulfilling 48 prophecies - Jesus fulfilled 330!
http://www.ccel.org/contrib/exec_outlines/gosp/gosp_02.htm

To keep it as short as possible, it must be made clear that there is no comparison between Jesus and any other prophet of any other faith as not one of them ever Identified themselves as from Heaven, God incarnate, or as God as Jesus attested to, and not one of them arose from the dead after departing this human life.

Just because something is not “detected by anyone” does not support it’s non-existence and that has been proven throughout history even during the current era with discoveries of living organisms and creatures still being discovered that we never realized existed. For something to exist according to standard definitions it is “to be of or have real being whether material or spiritual.” Unlike the dragon, if in fact everything of a physical and tangible nature came from nothing physical or tangible or elemental as physics is leading to, and did find its origin as the creation of a higher being, then God would most certainly have had far more than a physical affect on everything and in the most constant and detectable ways, one alone being the very existence of each entity including that of ourselves. I refer you to the following references:

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/atheismintro2.html
http://www.2001principle.net/finetune.jpg

continued next post…

 

[twb1621]

Yes…

You adopt the following according to your words; “I think that things that exist are things that manifest and affect the physical world in detectable ways. That is, in fact, what “exist” means”. .How much of human history do you accept with nothing more than written records no more supported by physical evidence (in some cases less) than the ancient scriptural texts? Let’s quote you from the OP: “In the first place, no one questions that Caesar crossed the Rubicon because of the strength of the evidence we have for it, including documents written personally by the people involve (Caesar among them!)…” First I must ask what proof you have to know that Caesar personally wrote any of the documents?)
“…and the subsequent history of Rome, which reflects the outcome of the event.”
In regard to this and your previous quote, what evidence do you have that is any more significant and credible, or possesses any more proofs than those of the Gospels which were written by the immediate Christian disciples of the Apostles, or the writings of the Apostolic Fathers who personally knew and were taught by the apostles and in many cases succeeded the Apostles, those being the eye witnesses of the life, death and Resurrection of Christ, or the writings of the historians themselves who were not Christians, but Roman historians having no less validity than those you refer to in your quotes (this being the evidence of your use of double standards.)

Further, you say that because the apostles themselves did not personally write the Gospels they are not credible, but you fail to recognize the Gospel writings according to historic dating were performed during the time of the life of some of the apostles and certainly during the period of the Apostolic Fathers who lived among the apostles, learned directly from the Apostles and also personally wrote of the events and teachings and the validity of the written Gospels themselves, as it was the ECFs who selected the texts found to be authentic in teachings to be subsequently placed in the Bible.

There is nothing consistently recorded as living history over the last 2000 years in reference to the history and continuity of the Rome Empire as there is in the Teachings of the Gospels and the entity that began with the Apostles of Christ, that being the Catholic Church and Faith. If you are to claim the resurrection is but a myth, you are proven wrong by absolute human nature aside from anything else, as there is no generation of man that would falsify an event such as the Resurrection of Christ having no reason to believe any longer in eternal life after death, knowingly leaving the safety of seclusion and anonymity to publicly proclaim a knowingly false gospel committing themselves to the horrific deaths they knew they would suffer as a result. Nor would they falsely pass on a teaching of love of each other and a hope of a definitive eternal life with God after death knowingly sending thousands upon thousands of others to horrid tortures crucifixions, beheadings and deaths by the shredding of flesh by animals as entertainment for the roman masses. The martyrdom they would be sending the faithful to suffer would be in direct defiance to the Teaching of a brotherly love in the love of Christ as the risen Messiah, knowing full well the tortures and deaths that would come to be among many of the believers. Such beliefs that the resurrection did not occur defy the evidence of human nature and the instinct of man, lack credibility, deny historic records of Christian and non-Christian ancient documentation, lack rationality and common sense. Further as was said previously, throughout the last 2000 years there has never been a scientific discovery to undermine Christianity or the existence of God but many that have supported both.

In closing, it would be more rational to research which Faith presents the True God rather than reject all because all man has not settled upon one. Your very disbelief explains the diversity of beliefs.

 

[Tuno]

Yes, you’re guessing. That’s precisely the problem here. You guess that everybody who experiences these states of consciousness – which are typically marked by profound bliss, a feeling of “absorption,” and an absence of the self – has to go into loopy rants about the “ineffable” or else they experienced the wrong state of consciousness.

You’re guessing, in short, that everyone has to react the same way that you do – and then you ironically proceed to lecture me on “getting out of the mind.”,

The fact that you happen to like one particular brand of psychophysiological effect or that you found one brand to be particularly useful to you doesn’t really demonstrate much else.

Anyway, I’m not trying to pick on you or anything – you seem to not be making any supernatural claims about all of this stuff. I’m just pointing out that effects generated in your brain don’t demonstrate anything outside of your own brain.

Thanks for the lecture, AT, but neither do I expect anyone else to have the same response to a state that I do, nor am I guessing. I’m referring, in my particular instance, to a few individuals who independently arrived at similar functional conclusions to mine as regarding the nature of their mind’s processes as distinct from moods, feelings or whatever. In fact, the one event that actually made a difference in my life threw me for a huge disorienting loop. There was nothing wonderful about it in terms especially of what people thought about me when I reported my conclusions. It took a lot of work to integrate that experience into my data base, so to speak, as it pretty much yanked the rug out from under me as to who and what I thought I am. But it was also the singular event that allowed me to free my thinking from the religious context I was, up to that point, heavily invested in.

Also, I nave indicated that I consider you and your rather intelligent comments, as far as they go, to be at a level somewhat in advance of the state that supports religious conviction. But what makes you so sure, through intellectual assessment, that there is nothing else? I am very clear in terms of rationality, as you use it, that there cannot be. And in a way, you are quite correct, as far as you go. But does that mean therefor that there absolutely cannot cannot be more, the fine quote from TJ not withstanding? Do the scholars who similarly categorize more mature states of awareness have no credence with you? Those that I consider to be useful are generally agreed on the stages of such a maturation. But then, it is possible, I guess, that you are, as I said earlier, yet in the same boat as religionists at this point.

I myself was similarly convinced when I was of a religious mind, despite a few mystical experiences of the type you so clearly describe. In the crunch, I had no wish to have a different perspective, it was forced upon me as a pellucid clarity. It was not something I thought up or out. It is just an irrefutable condition not ordinarily perceived in the busyness of the subject/object ordinariness of “normal” life, though it is not apart from it. In short, it demonstrated to me a functional dynamic of my brain and awareness regarding it that I had heard of as theory, but now have experienced as actuality.

It cost me much emotionally due to my religious convictions, but it also resulted in an interesting side effect: my grades and performance in school went up, much to my surprise. It seems my mind had re-organized around a more fundamental way of perception that allowed a greater general clarity. That, similarly to the meditation in the lab thing, was a quantifiable result.

None of this is meant as an argument to convince you, as you clearly have an invested stance which is working well for you. And it will, of course do that till you move one, again similarly to religionists and faithers. Yours, at this point simply doesn’t account for an element that is missing from their position as well. So, we shall see. Or not, lol! It is good either way.

 

[Tuno]

Sorry, what I meant is, what particular story are you referring to with story A and Story B. I understand what you are trying to say, I think my question was a little vague.

Yes, it was. How, as claimed in earlier posts, is the story of Horus raising Osiris from the dead, along with its coincident similarites, a copy of the younger (by millenia) story of Jesus raising Lazarus?

 

[tonyrey]

Selecting one tribe over another is an act of partiality.
Partiality is absurd.

No matter what kind of sugar coating is put on it, it remains absurd.

It is absurd to think it is possible to treat everyone equally. We are all different and no one - let alone two tribes or societies - has exactly the same opportunities as another. What counts is what we make of our opportunities. We are not judged according to how much we know but how much we love others…

 

[Tuno]

It is absurd to think it is possible to treat everyone equally. We are all different and no one - let alone two tribes or societies - has exactly the same opportunities as another. What counts is what we make of our opportunities. We are not judged according to how much we know but how much we love others…

Yes, and that is precisely why it stands to reason that even an anthropomorphic God such as the Christian would not in good sense limit revelation to a single people over one year of public as a facet of Person, even if that allegedly “fulfilled” some period of tribal lore. The only possible reason such a restriction could occur is that it served that group as a useful paradigm to assert and justify a sense of rightness such as is necessarily endemic in that mentality. That paradigm cannot refer to or denote an actual Supreme Being except to some degree as symbol for a more ineffable Understanding not capable of public comprehension.

 

[Tuno]

Wow, TWB, I gotta say I had to transfer your three red posts into Word and revert the type color to black in order to read your statements. Not only were my eyes going bonkers, it reminded me of reading a prayer book, But with the gray background, as a visual person, the color vibration is too much to bear.

Now, while I stand with you in terms of the sense that Man has of there being More than physicality, I agree with AT as to the futility of any sort of “proof” that might be brought to bear on this question by way of intellectual assertion, argument, or demonstration. That just doesn’t, and can’t work unless one is already a believer. I have a vast collection of stories from many faiths and non faiths that fall into the “but if they could just see from my perspective they would understand!” Ain’t gonna happen. They are all beliefs, and despite all protestations, faith is not knowledge, and especially is not Knowledge. Faith and belief, even if it is atheism, is in the last analysis the adult form of “let’s pretend.” And if you have a big investment in your stance, religious or atheistic, you will not play well with others not of your own game. There will only be argument as to whose game is the True game, as is very evident on here. So in terms of belief, AT is as credible in dis-belief as you are in belief. Or both are equally incredible. You choose.

 

[tonyrey]

Mankind is, say, 40K years old as Homo sap. Two thousand years ago, “Christianity” starts. Today, about a sixth of the population is nominally Catholic, statistically half of those not really fully practicing, or at odds with some fundamental tenet such as transubstantiation or dogma such as birth control.

Ultimately we all have to work out everything on our own. That is why we exist but deviations in what we believe are less important than how we treat others.

The practicing Catholics I know constitute a variety of belief systems that loosely agree on some points of the mainline teaching of the Church, and having gone through the Catholic school system through high school, I know darned well that there were few who are truly devout “traditional” Catholics and all those mostly continued in their disparate paths to this day, as far as I know.
We can add to that that we know from the early days and the writings of the Church Fathers that the first task the Church had was to distinguish itself from the paganism that they admitted it was hard to tell themselves apart from…As for the body of the Church, it grew in this differentiation by proceeding with everything from slander and discreditation, through book burnings and bannings of cults, to downright death camp pogroms of non-Christians. All this got a boost when it became politically expedient in what, the third century? to be Christian by order of the Emperor.

The misdeeds and trangressions of Christians do not impugn the truth of Christ’s teaching.

Let us go further and visit some of the great Saints. Eliminating all the ones in the roster who were imaginary, and discounting ones that were possibly wonderful people, the really great ones were fundamentally mystics. If you read their words dispassionately they have transcended the form of the Church, having gone “direct,” one might say. And in fact, their statements are very uncomfortably identical with the words of mystics from other traditions, and even more uncomfortably to the words of men and women to this day who have arrived independently at nearly exactly similar conclusions through means other than devotional. If one reads such works as Love Poems from God, edited by Daniel Ladinsky, the introduction to Basic Self Knowledge by Harry Benjamin, The New Man by Maurice Nicoll, and many, many others, this becomes pretty clear even without having come to the fruition of the interior exercise of self observation as recommended from ancient times.

That Stream of congruently proponing mystics, the Saints and Sages of the ages, and “accidentals” have been with us from time immemorial. So for my part, I contend both from experience and study that God is everywhere and always available as Divine Self to those willing to go “beyond the mind” through difficult work, which includes seeing through any particular religious paradigm one finds themselves in, or through Grace. Let us again remember here the last days of St Thomas Aquinas, and his statements about his own work, which statements are not dissimilar from that of other Sages upon their physical demise. There is excellent and practical reason for such remarks.

Although St Thomas disparaged his work he has enlightened us in many ways, not the least of which is the via negativa. As Pascal pointed out, “Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pas” but it would be folly to abandon reason entirely. Beethoven said his music goes “from the heart to the heart” but he dedicated almost a decade to the composition of Missa Solemnis in which he expressed the inexpressible by constantly refining his work in his efforts to communicate the emotions evoked by his deep faith in God.

The Way of that Stream includes everyone at all times, and is based on what you might in Catholicism call being “made in the Image and Likeness of God.” In other words, the facts of the matter are interiorly present always and everywhere to each one as the structure of Soul. And this is why, my dear friend, I contend, again from experience with my own seeking at the time of my life altering/altaring experience, that faith as adamantized habit can be a mental obstruction to actual spiritual progress… And again, this is why it often takes a shock to displace habit in favor of receptivity to actuality, and why it is used in many mystical disciplines.

Therein lies the wisdom of St Thomas Aquinas because he realised that ultimately words serve only as pointers to the truth. They can take us a long way but not all the way…

Having had the shock, and re-examining the structure of the Gospels, a number of things become clear about why the Church is the way it publicly is, and why it teaches what it does. But especially it becomes clear why there constantly needs to be the statement made that the actions of the members of the Church do not represent the teaching of the Church. The proponents of what you might name, though it is unnamable, as the Perennial Philosophy, have never had need to make such a statement.

A divine institution with fallible members is a lesser evil than no institution at all!

I don’t expect you to agree… Only thing is, the story I propose spans a wider and deeper comprehension of Relationship with the Divine and even includes congruency with the Identity statements of both the OT and NT. So go figure. At least it is a darned interesting tale, and it works and has worked for me these past 45+ years with increasing grace, practicality, and elegance.

I agree with you more than you think! No religion is worth having unless we make it our own. My views are unusual in various ways - on hell for example - but they are personal and I do not impose them on others. My overriding criterion is the reality of God’s infinite love. “By their fruits you shall know them…”

 

[tonyrey]

Yes, and that is precisely why it stands to reason that even an anthropomorphic God such as the Christian would not in good sense limit revelation to a single people over one year of public as a facet of Person, even if that allegedly “fulfilled” some period of tribal lore. The only possible reason such a restriction could occur is that it served that group as a useful paradigm to assert and justify a sense of rightness such as is necessarily endemic in that mentality. That paradigm cannot refer to or denote an actual Supreme Being except to some degree as symbol for a more ineffable Understanding not capable of public comprehension.

I am sorry you have been banned. I wish you well - and add that it is impossible for any of us to **understand **God. Nor is it necessary. Love is more important than anything else…

 

[twb1621]

Wow, TWB, I gotta say I had to transfer your three red posts into Word and revert the type color to black in order to read your statements. Not only were my eyes going bonkers, it reminded me of reading a prayer book, But with the gray background, as a visual person, the color vibration is too much to bear.

Now, while I stand with you in terms of the sense that Man has of there being More than physicality, I agree with AT as to the futility of any sort of “proof” that might be brought to bear on this question by way of intellectual assertion, argument, or demonstration. That just doesn’t, and can’t work unless one is already a believer. I have a vast collection of stories from many faiths and non faiths that fall into the “but if they could just see from my perspective they would understand!” Ain’t gonna happen. They are all beliefs, and despite all protestations, faith is not knowledge, and especially is not Knowledge. Faith and belief, even if it is atheism, is in the last analysis the adult form of “let’s pretend.” And if you have a big investment in your stance, religious or atheistic, you will not play well with others not of your own game. There will only be argument as to whose game is the True game, as is very evident on here. So in terms of belief, AT is as credible in dis-belief as you are in belief. Or both are equally incredible. You choose.

Hi Tuno, yes, let me say I apologize for all that red, I was initially attempting to offer a distinguishing character between the quoted text and the responses but got lost in the response itself and neglected to tone it done as I intended….
In response to your commentary, I must point out one crucial element that invalidates AT’s supportive references. That being his double standards in the principles he utilizes to justify his position denying the credibility of history when related to documents and artifacts of faith. If in fact he used the same standards for both, he would have no supporting references at all.
That has been clearly shown and is indisputable and I might ad invalidating.

 

[AntiTheist]

How much of human history do you accept with nothing more than written records no more supported by physical evidence (in some cases less) than the ancient scriptural texts? …] what proof [do] you have to know that Caesar personally wrote any of the documents?

Yikes. This is exactly the kind of nonsense that some Christians come out with when you successfully point out that there’s insufficient evidence for the gospels being anything more than myths: “Well, uh…you don’t have absolute proof of anything in history! So therefore you take everything on complete, blind faith! Therefore, no one really knows anything at all, and everyone is justified in believing whatever they like!”

There aren’t only two options – either absolute proof or blind faith. There’s also the matter of using available evidence to determine what is most likely the case.

There’s a large body of convincing evidence that Caesar existed and crossed the Rubicon. Is it possible that there is some kind of large-scale conspiracy to pretend that Caesar existed? I suppose it’s possible – in the same way that it’s possible that leprechauns steal and move my car keys when I’m not looking – but it’s also incredibly unlikely. The evidence points very strongly to the existence of Caesar and his crossing the Rubicon. It’s not something that I’m absolutely certain of – I’m absolutely certain of almost nothing – but it’s so close to certain that it would be silly to question.

It’s a completely different case when you’re talking about legends of a man working magic and returning from the dead, supported only by non-eyewitness accounts written down by cult members who worshipped this figure.

Now, certainly, there are some things in history that are less certain than others. A good example – one I’ve probably mentioned before – is the existence of Socrates. There is very little evidence that he actually existed. The only real evidence that exists is Plato’s writings, and it’s been suggested that perhaps Plato just made Socrates up out of thin air.

So on the issue of Socrates’ existence, I reserve judgment on whether he was really a person or not. Now certainly, when it comes to discussing the ideas attributed to Socrates, I will employ the convention of labeling them “Socrates’ ideas” – in the same way that I might employ the convention of referring to the words attributed to the Jesus as “Jesus’ teachings” – but that’s an issue of linguistic convenience, not of accepting claims.

I consider it possible that Socrates existed, but it’s not really an issue that keeps me up all night. Whether he existed or not is kind of besides the point – it’s the words attributed to him that matter. If someone said that they wanted me to accept Socrates as my personal savior, I would have to respond honestly by noting that there’s not enough evidence to accept that he was a real guy, let alone the savior of the world.

And certainly, if we discovered some writings by Plato that said that Socrates had the ability to fly under his own power, I wouldn’t accept that as true.