No, it is not. Yet we live in a culture implicitly predicated on that delusion. Happiness is just another consumer product away. Another sexual encounter away. Another pay rise away. Another overseas vacation away. And while there is nothing wrong with the aforementioned things in themselves, we...
To cultivate all these virtues is to follow timeless wisdom. Particularly detachment, which has value when we accept that the things of the world can never grant lasting happiness. This does not mean we cultivate a sociopathic indifference to the joys or sufferings of the world but that we...
If the dharmic religions are closer to the truth in terms of how the afterlife works (that is reincarnation is a thing) then the reason for earthly suffering is the playing out of karmic debt. Even so, both Hinduism and Buddhism still assert the existence of realms where sinners are punished for...
I believe the existence of an after death moral reckoning to be basic spiritual truth. Whether or not this reckoning involves a literal place of penal fire is not something I would assert with certainty, although the image of such a place is found not only in Christianity and Islam but in...
Today is the Assumption of Mary. Although only made dogma in the 1950's the belief that Mary was assumed into Heaven (body and soul) is ancient. For anyone devoted to the Blessed Virgin today is an important feast day. Indeed, it is in fact a day of obligation.
Being such a solemnity, Mass...
I love the written word. And I spend significant time with it. The important point is that being an atheist in no way grants you an intellectual high ground.
I did not say the Qur'an itself is meaningless to Christians. It is meaningful in that the text explicitly denies at least two central tenets of Christian belief. (The incarnation and the crucifixion). What I did say is that for Christians the integrity of the Quranic text is a meaningless...
Not quite. While Christians do claim that the Mosaic Law has been superseded, the Old Testament is still accepted as divine revelation. There's no claim that the Old Testament is corrupt. And I say Old Testament rather that Hebrew Bible because the Catholic and Orthodox canons differ from the...
The Garden of Eden represents the primeval memory better times before the decline that defines our current era. The antediluvian era represents the transitional period between the Dvapara Yuga and the Kali Yuga. That is, the hardships and sinfulness of life in the Kali Yuga are established but...
I have just noticed something interesting.
Implied by a literal reading of Genesis the world was created about 6000 years ago. The exact year of creation varies depending on what source you accept. One says 4004 BC and another 3929 BC. (Ussher and Lightfoot). According to the Hebrew calendar...
It is interesting that I should see this thread today, as earlier I was reading about the Hindu concept of the Kali Yuga. The idea being that our present age is destined to an inexorable moral decline. Until the end, when God will appear (on a white horse with a blazing sword) to restore moral...
Both are music, but the experiences evoked are so different that they're not remotely the same thing.
Likewise, 'Jesus is my Superhero' and 'Testamentum Eternum' are both Christian, but it's obtuse to pretend they're the same thing. The intent and experience could not be more opposed. But hey...
Genre music such as pop, rock and jazz are profane by nature and intention. It is music intended to entertain and evoke the baser passions. It's not that you can't have genre songs which touch on philosophical or spiritual ideas, but attempting to use these forms of music as vehicles of...
In Catholic teaching anyone who has undergone a valid trinitarian baptism is Christian. Bob may be a bad Christian. He may be a schismatic: he may be a heretic. But the mark of baptism is believed to be indelible. Which means it cannot be undone by sin.