Demystifying Jesus

[Aussiescribbler]

A mere mortal human being claiming he had always existed, could forgive the sin of others, could take away the keys to Hell from Satan, and would rise from his own death is either crazy in whatever year he happened to claim it, or was divine no matter what year he claimed it.

I'm coming to this matter from a different perspective. For me the existence of the supernatural is not on the table. I suppose if I had an experience of something supernatural myself then I might change my mind, but I'm not going to change my mind on the basis of a written account. You can categorise this as stubbornness on my part. The reason is that I've seen too many people who, once they open the door to supernatural belief, start denying aspects of physical reality. So I see it as the absolute last resort, to be argued against as resolutely as anything can be. That way lies madness. I speak from experience.

So I actually take roughly the same approach to religious writing that I would take to a psychotic person. How much truth can I find in their madness? In both cases the truth will be expressed in symbols and in terms of archetypes such as "God" and "the Devil". The truth needs to be decoded.

We come back to the pantheistic view of "God" and the ability of the honest individual to give voice to the creative principle of the universe. I could say : "I am life itself and have existed since first a piece of matter began to move under its own agency. I was the first fish to crawl onto land. I was the tyrannosaurus rex ripping the flesh of a brontosaurus. I was the first human to paint on the wall of the cave under the flickering flame that I stole from the lightning." Am I crazy? Or am I giving poetic voice to a spiritual vision? (And by "spiritual" I mean pertaining to immaterial relationships. The tyrannosaurus existed. I exist. We have never met. Imagining a tyrannosaurus makes me feel a physical emotion. There is a relationship between me and the tyrannosaurus as imagined by me, but I've never met a tyrannosaurus. So the relationship between us is not a material one, as it would be if one bit me. For me this realm of immaterial relationships which produce emotion is what I call "spiritual".

As for forgiving sins, I have made the argument that "sin" is selfishness which often arises from a sense of guilt. Thus the guilt, because it produces more "sin", is counterproductive to the cause of reducing sin. Therefore, if someone forgives themselves for having been "sinful" they will become less "sinful" and perhaps, eventually, free of "sin". If "God" is the creative principle which is expressed in human affairs as love, then it benefits "God" that we feel that our "sins" have been forgiven. So someone who speaks for this creative principle has the authority to forgive "sin".

Who is Satan and what is Hell? Satan is a mythological figure also described as "The Accuser" and "The Father of Lies". Satan represents the dark side of idealism which accuses us of being unworthy. He represents the insidious suggestion that we should be perfect. Perfection is something which exists only in the human imagination. To demand perfection - as the idealist does - is offensive psychological bullying. It makes us angry. It robs us of our self-acceptance and thus makes us ego embattled, i.e. selfish. And the guilty feelings it inspires may contaminate our ability to think honestly, because the natural thing is to evade anything which would cause us pain. In these ways, contact with idealism corrupts us, making us angry, selfish and dishonest. Because of idealism our social world became a world of lies. Hell is both the personal experience of living in this corrupted state and the world of lies itself within which we are enchained. The role of a prophet like Jesus is to cut through the lies, to unlock the chains and provide us with the truth that sets us free from our state of corruption.

And the real Jesus was not the body but the message. The resurrection was the new life the message had after his body died.

So none of these claims seem irrational to me. Symbols speak to us on a deeper level which reason may not reach. "Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father." John 16:25 This seems to support my contention that Jesus was using symbols which spoke to people's hearts, because he didn't have a way to reach their rational minds.

That is a false deduction, what Christ was and did is causally unrelated to what those followers who disobeyed him have done.

The question I'm asking is whether there would have been an Inquisition or the slaughter of the Cathars or the burning of the "witches" etc. if there had never been a Jesus. Is it a flaw in the way a message was communicated that allows people to believe they are doing the will of the originator of the message when they do things which run totally counter to that message? And the conclusion I come to is that no message could have been immune to perversion of this kind.

Ok, this gets back to the heart of my problems with Pantheism.

Take the two most accepted cosmological models, the BBT and the BGVT. You account for both within the bounds of Pantheism, and I will within Christianity and we can see how each stacks up. Deal?

I don't claim to understand the Big Bang Theory and I'm not sure what BGVT is. I did a search and didn't come up with anything. I feel no need to understand the origin of the universe. If someone works it out I'll give their explanation a listen. Maybe the universe began some time in some way, maybe it has existed always. I'm not sure how knowledge of the beginning of the universe, if there was one, would impact how I decide to live my life.

I don't see pantheism as a way of explaining things, but as a mode of perception. I have given explanations for things, but those explanations don't arise from pantheism. Pantheism is simply a frame of reference within which such explanations can be placed. To me, pantheism is simply the view that the universe is a natural system within which order and complexity can come into being without the requirement for anything external to that system. (I recognise that I'm adding to the official definition.) Pantheism, in my view, does not promise any kind of explanation for anything. If we want explanations then we have to look to science and recognise that it involves a process of achieving closer approximations to the truth. We can't expect absolute certainties.

Actually let's start further back with one additional question. Since your God is the universe, and since the universe does not communicate anything about it's will, what Pantheism is, or whether Pantheism is true or not then how do you know any of those things.

Have I claimed to know anything? I express my opinions without qualification because that is the manner of bold communication. I don't claim any authority for the ideas I express. My philosophy is to freely express what seems true to me on the assumption that it will either seem credible to someone else, in which case they may adopt it, or be rejected as not credible. I believe in the survival of the fittest regarding ideas. If someone comes up with a way of explaining something which makes more sense to people than the way they have been explaining that thing then the new idea will gradually replace the old. If it doesn't make more sense to people then it will fade away. If by some weird accident I say something which is actually true, then the authority it carries will come from the fact that it is true and certainly not from the fact that it came from me - an indifferently educated erotica-writing library worker with a history of mental illness. If I were a university professor I would have to be much more careful about what ideas I expressed because people might be fooled by my position of authority into treating my opinions more seriously than their inherent value might warrant.

That is the first time I have ever seen anyone but me mention Christ and Nietzsche in the same paragraph. It is definitely different than a wedding in Cana. It is a prophecy about his second coming, the intent being to show that Christ is occupant of the throne of God and to reassure that even though he would die in filth and misery he would return in power and glory.

Now if you want to try and claim Christ spoke in analogies, parables, symbolism, apocalyptic imagery, poetry, by inference, code, prophecy, etc.... That is fine but debates take place on common ground. You must point out which scriptures you want to investigate, which one of those categories applies to those scriptures, as well as apply the same accepted hermeneutics, etymology, and exegesis as has been perfected by 2000 years of the greatest expert's in the related fields developed concerning the most scrutinized book in human history. Once you do so then we can resolve whether you are right or wrong.

I'm happy to discuss any piece of scripture you want to chose. It's really up to you to find a passage I can't give a non-supernatural interpretation to. Most of the time I don't think it will be all that surprising whether I think something is a parable, apocalyptic imagery, prophecy etc., as parables are usually presented as such, apocalyptic imagery is apocalyptic imagery regardless of whether you feel the apocalypse is something supernatural or not and predictions about the future, likewise, are prophecies regardless of how we interpret them. As to whether we can resolve whether I am right or wrong, I have my doubts about that. Reality is what proves us right or wrong. You believe in a supernatural God, so if you are right then the reality which will prove me wrong will be that supernatural God. If there is no supernatural God then that won't happen, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you will have an encounter with reality that dissuades you.

 

[Aussiescribbler]

That is tricky, while love may be somewhat spiritual, most emotions are the result of chemical interactions.

Yes, emotions are physical. They are experiences of the flesh. But there are immaterial relationships between people which allow for the communication of emotions. If I see an old friend on the street and feel happy, the fact that I feel happy is not just a direct physical response, like a dog salivating at the smell of meat. My physical response is because of something immaterial - our relationship as friends. Each of us is a physical entity and the things we have done together are physical activities, but our relationship is something immaterial. Similarly, the words I'm typing are physical, but the meaning that is expressed by those words is immaterial. So for me the realm of the spiritual is this realm of immaterial things which nevertheless come from and influence the material world. None of these things contravenes the laws of nature.

Again let me remind you that I said that Christ's primary mission was spiritual, I did not say that that was his only mission. This is easy to see the way I described it. His primary mission was not to save us from dying in the material of fleshly sense, it was to united us with the father who is 100% spiritual (a disembodied mind). He performed that roll by being spiritually resurrected from death which came from a source which is 100% spiritual and which transcend the physical world.

When you say that he was "spiritually resurrected from death", do you mean that his body was not resurrected, only his spirit, or do you mean that his body was resurrected through the action of something spiritual?

Maybe this will make it clearer. Of this world applies to things that are governed by natural law. Not of this world are things which are not governed by natural law, which in fact supersede natural laws (i.e. the supernatural or spiritual)

Did Christ feed 5000 people with a fish and a few loaves of bread by any natural law you can name, or by some force that transcends every natural law we know of.

I think this is an example of mythologising. It may be that there was a big audience and only a small amount of food and yet they were not dissatisfied because of the sustenance they got from Jesus' message. But what makes the story most meaningful to me is to treat it like a parable. It isn't a parable. I recognise that. Jesus is not telling the story. But the idea of having too little and then finding that, through Jesus' agency, there is a surplus, speaks to my vision of a new world beyond lies and selfishness. At the moment we feel we don't have enough, and, in fact, many are starving. There isn't enough to go around. We are like 5000 people fighting over a fish a few loaves of bread. But if we take on board what I feel to be Jesus' message of forgiveness of sins, i.e. liberation from the sense of guilt which makes us selfish, then we will be so easily satisfied that there will be enough for all and plenty left over, because we will produce for others far more than we consume from others.

This another example of what is so weird about Pantheism. Compared to the Heaven I believe in your description of heaven strips the word of everything that makes it meaningful or profound.

I can understand that. I feel the same way about supernatural descriptions of Heaven. I can see that mine for you is far too meagre. But yours, for me, has all the meaning or profundity of Walt Disney's Fantasyland. It took me a long time to arrive at my concept of Heaven. All of this has taken me a long time. As a teenager I was fascinated by the moral vision expressed in the Gospel of Matthew. I found it painfully condemning, but I couldn't simply dismiss it. On the other hand I had no belief in the supernatural elements. Gradually I've come to see symbolic meaning in what is presented as supernatural, but it has not always been an easy process as the neurotic mind is not well grounded to think about such challenging subjects. If one has faith then I can see that it is possible to hand oneself over to a dogma and have the security that comes from the fellowship of others who share one's beliefs. To go by one's own path in search of meaning is an uncertain enterprise. It means grappling with the possibility that one may be on the side of evil. In time, an inner calm and openness and an increased facility in tackling challenges, give one a sense of being on solid ground at last. Those moments of vertigo, as if one were walking on a rickety bridge across a bottomless pit, disappear. But still the meanings one finds in terms like "Heaven" are mostly intellectual. There are moments when you don't just see it, but feel a touch of its reality. I'm so alienated, my thinking is so crooked and my heart so closed in self-protection, that I have to try to find my way by first thinking something, then saying it, and hoping that one day I'll be able to feel and live it. But the supernatural is not helpful to me because it is not a part of the world in which I live. Stories of supernatural events don't touch my lived experience, so humble as my definition of heaven is, it is the only one I can use.

That is not relevant to my claim. I said the original biblical documents were written by eye witnesses to most of the events they contained. However there is an even more absolute way to show this. The gospel writers stated that the Holy Spirit came to them to remind them of all the events they were to record. Since the Holy Spirit observed every event that has ever occurred then that means that all the Gospels were ultimately written by an eyewitness to their events.

My understanding is that the four gospels in the New Testament were not written down by people who witnessed the events they relate. I can understand that the claim by the writers to have been visited by the Holy Spirit carries weight with you, but since I don't believe in the supernatural it carries no weight with me. My aim is to find meaning in the words attributed to Jesus. I don't believe the gospels are trustworthy. They talk about magical events which I don't think literally happened. Also there appear to be discrepancies between the accounts which argue against their having been guided by some infallible "Holy Spirit". (I can't argue this point myself. I'm simply going by the evidence presented in Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) by Bart D. Ehrman

No offense intended but you realize that you are wagering your immortal soul on a proposition you chose based on the proximity of a term relative to your speculation concerning metaphysics? Christianity offer something that no other mainstream religion ever has, the bible promises every believer a spiritual experience which validates and confirms out intellectual consent. It will be too late for you to change your mind if you find your self in Yahweh's presence after death. I concentrate on the less important aspects of debate instead of keeping what the stakes are too often. There are 3 categories of religions concerning confirmation.

1. There is only one faith (Christianity) that I have researched which both offers and demands that everyone who comes to believe has a spiritual experience with the risen Christ which validates our faith. For this category you can know your right before it is too late.
2. The second category are faiths that claim that some usually small subgroup may at some point have a validating experience. Hinduism enlightenment would be an example. For this group only a tiny fraction can know they are right before it is too late.
3. The third group include faith's like Pantheism are more philosophy's that religions but regardless they do not offer anyone spiritual confirmation of their faith. So for 90% of those in category 2 and for 100% of those in category 3 it will be too late to change when and if you realize you were wrong.

I'm not "wagering my immoral soul" on a matter of semantics. I can understand that you feel that I am making that wager by not accepting a supernatural Christian belief, but I'm in this situation not because I like the word "pantheism" but because I don't believe in the supernatural and thus have no choice but to look for meaning in the world I can directly experience. For better or worse, honesty is the central value by which I've tried to live my life. Clearly the kind of Christianity you are suggesting would only be open to me if I believed in it. Even assuming there are all sorts of advantages that come with such a belief, to lie and say that I accept the existence of a supernatural deity and a supernatural saviour would not open them to me.

I don't feel that my immortal soul is in peril. I believe in a collective soul, that we are all, at base, life itself, and that culture is a kind of soul of humanity. I don't believe in a personal soul seperate from the body.

I have no fear of God. This may be due to ignorance, but it is true all the same. I am what I am. If there is a supernatural God then he will have to dispose of me as he sees fit.

I can defend my faith through thousands of philosophic arguments, in a dozen academic fields, and by a mountain of evidence because my religion acts as a fixed point which is easy to evaluate. However, Pantheism seems to be malleable, vague, and has no fixed point to make it readily evaluated. I do not think Pantheism is true because I know my religion is true and my religion is exclusive. My faith being true means all competing faiths must be false, but until Pantheism can make claims that can be evaluated it would be a hard idea to falsify.

I would not like to be seen as a representative of pantheism. I'm sure many pantheists would look at what I've written here and say : "What is this crazy talk?" I use the term merely to indicate that I accept that the term "God" can have a useful meaning, but that I don't believe in the supernatural. Pantheism has no prophet. I don't even classify it as a religion. It is more akin to a school of philosophy. And I've read no works by pantheists (except maybe William Blake who is sometimes so categorised, though perhaps not by himself), so I can hardly claim any authority on the subject. All of this stuff is just coming out of my own head, but what can we do but use the mind nature has given us to try to make sense of things. Of course we read books and listen to people and assess what they say for believability and usefulness, adopting what we can use and rejecting what we can't. Some may find a belief system which meets all of their needs, and there the search ends, but others will not find themselves able to accept any made-to-measure belief system. For them, their worldview will remain a work-in-progress.

 

[Aussiescribbler]

Right, to me also, there is No precedent in nature of living forever on Earth.
That ' everlasting life ' on Earth was only offered to Adam and his descendants. - Genesis 2:17

How do you reconcile this with evolution? How did animals with eternal life evolve from animals which didn't have eternal life?

The purposeful breaking of God's law damaged Adam, thus damaged Adam could only pass on to us his damaged physical state. Since we are innocent of what Adam did, but can't undo the physical, emotional, spiritual damage inherited from father Adam we fall short through No fault of our own.

If this damage was inherited you make it sound like some kind of genetic damage. Emotional damage can be passed on via nurturing, but inherited physical damage would be genetic.

So, we need someone who can help us.
God 'right away' at Genesis 3:15 promised an offspring (seed) who would come to our rescue/salvation/deliverance
and because Jesus was Not damaged from adamic shortcomings, thus Jesus then could even out and balance the scales of justice for us for what Adam did wrong.

I can understand that, if you believe in the immaculate conception, Jesus need not have shared any of the genetic material of Adam or Eve but could have been a newly created individual seperate from the rest of humanity. I don't believe in the immaculate conception though. I believe that Jesus was a man who inherited his genes from Mary and whoever his human father was. If it is true that Joseph was not the father then Mary must have had sex with some other man.

Before Jesus' ransom could be fully applied to us 'we' ( the human family ) we would first have to be born and fill ( populate ) the Earth as that is God's will ( purpose ) for Earth - Genesis 1:28 . This means that Jesus' coming 1,000-year governmental rulership over Earth will undo all the damage Satan and Adam brought upon us humans. Then means enemy death will be No more as mentioned at Isaiah 25:8 and 1 Corinthians 15:26. That opens up the way for us to gain 'everlasting life on Earth' as originally offered to Adam before his downfall.

I think the degree to which we experience ourselves to be immortal is dependent on the degree to which we are able to identify with process. If we experience ourselves only as separate individuals then we know that what we experience ourselves as must die. If we experience ourselves as the process of life itself then we are identifying with something that does not die when our body dies. It is possible that the people who are represented in the Bible by the fictional characters "Adam and Eve" had a kind of group mind like that of ants or bees. In this case they had the potential for immortality because each new generation was the same consciousness in new bodies. So the death which came to them through "eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" was individual consciousness arising from a state of psychological insecurity which made them ego-embattled or selfish. This may seem far fetched, but what is love but a sense that we are not really seperate entities, a little glimpse of what it was like to be a specie individual - to have a group mind - to not be alone?

ALL of the resurrections that Jesus performed were only physical resurrections.
ALL the old testament Hebrew Scripture resurrections were also physical resurrections.
Through father Abraham, God promised that ALL families of Earth will be blessed.
All nations of Earth will be blessed. Blessed with the benefits of healing for earth's nations - Revelation 22:2
- Genesis 12:3; Genesis 22:18

Yes, our genes come from out parents. 50% from one parent and 50% from the other parent, so that means each of us is unique and never lived before. Since both parents can't stop sinning ( leaning/ toward wrongdoing ) we inherit 100% of their imperfections, and thus pass on our inherited imperfection to our offspring.
If it were Not for Jesus' coming millennium-long day of governing over Earth that process would never end.
Now, through Jesus we can look forward to a permanent bright and happy-and-healthy future - Jeremiah 29:11

I see it more as a matter of knowledge bringing healing to minds than something magic bringing healing to genes, but I hope the bit about a happy-and-healthy future is correct.

 

[RedDragon94]

You're not condemned for believing in Yeshua

Who would say you're condemned for believing in Yeshua!?

you're condemned for not listening to his words,

But John said Jesus said that.

 

[fallingblood]

You have not proven to me Jesus existed. There is no proof here and I'm not interested in Jesus. There's plenty of proof that the Mormons leaders lived too.

Yes, Jospeh Smith was a historical figure. No one denies that.

And we do have proof Jesus existed. Josephus wrote about Jesus. We have Paul and the Gospels. You have not made a single rational argument as to why those aren't proof.

All other religions as Wiki said have proof as well, just Christianity. So what's the point? WHy should you care if I believe he existed?

You lie about what Wiki says, so I don't believe you. And I don't care if you believe he existed or not. If you hadn't said anything, I wouldn't care. However, you argued that he didn't exist. This is a debate forum. So yes, I'm going to debate something you said.

The truth is you lie about pushing the Christian religion here. If you were not you wouldn't care if I believe he existed or not. If your not pushing Christianity you should not give an iota about weather I believe Jesus existed.

It doesn't matter if you believe he existed or not. But if you are going to argue that he didn't, I'm going to argue against that. And no, I'm not pushing Christianity. The fact that atheists can and do believe that Jesus existed shows that acceptance of the historical certainty that Jesus existed does not confirm or deny the other tenants of Christianity.

More so, I don't think Jesus was the Messiah. I don't think he is necessary for salvation. I don't believe in a physical resurrection. I reject the mythology around Jesus. How is that pushing Christianity when I argue not for the Christ of faith, but the Jesus of history? A mere historical figure?

The Christian churches have been losing attendance and memberships for a few years. Wiki doesn't say most historians say Jesus existed, it says
they cant say he didn't exist anymore then any other leader of religion. Jesus isn't any different then Buddha or any other messiah from the past.

Other religions have grown from4 percent of American religions to 7 percent in the past 65 years. Muslim religion has the biggest amount of growth.

Again, you lie about what Wiki says. I showed you, quoting from Wikipedia, that Christianity is growing. Much of that growth, if one does research, comes from Asia, but that's still growth, and I'm not centered around the idea that America is somehow special and thus what happens here reflects rest of the world.

If we look at just the United States, sure there is a shift. So? It doesn't mean anything except that there is a shift. I'm fine with that. It doesn't make one religion any more true because more people follow it or because it is growing faster. You're argument here makes no sense.

And the Buddha was not a Messiah. And he was different from Jesus. Different time period. Different religion. Different context. And Wiki does say most historians agree that Jesus existed. From wikipedia: Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically,

So maybe instead of falsely citing Wikipedia, which really is just a lame attempt at an appeal to authority, and I say lame as you're not quoting Wikipedia, and many times are lying about what Wikipedia states, you want to make an actual argument.

Here is proof of my point from WIki.

There is no physical or archaeological evidence for Jesus. All sources are documentary, mainly Christian writings, such as the gospels and the purported letters of the apostles. The authenticity and reliability of these sources has been questioned by many scholars, and few events mentioned in the gospels are universally accepted.[39]

In conjunction with biblical sources, three mentions of Jesus in non-Christian sources have been used in the historical analyses of the existence of Jesus.[40] These are two passages in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, and one from the Roman historian Tacitus.[40][41]

Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, written around 93–94 AD, includes two references to the biblical Jesus Christ in Books 18 and 20.

That's not proof of what you said. That's proof that there is no physical or archeological evidence for Jesus. There is no physical or archeological evidence for much of history. The only archeological evidence for Jesus that could possibly be had is a body. So it's not a surprise there is none.

However, we do have textual evidence. Textual evidence which you've never shown is incorrect.

That all I have to say.The only proof you've given is that historians agree with his existence which means nothing and Josephus writing. Theres no actual physical proof.

So you've proved nothing.

You've moved the goal posts. And you've shown you have no idea what history is about. So historians accept that Jesus existed, Josephus actually wrote about Jesus, but that's not good enough because we don't have a body? That's ridiculous. By that reasoning, we might as well as ignore the vast majority of history because we have no "actual physical proof."

That's not how history works. We don't have physical proof for much of history. By your logic, most of U.S. history never happened because we don't have physical evidence. We only have textual evidence.

BTW on the bible, its not acceptable to say its ok that the bible contradicts itself. If it were meant to be read as an individual book all of the books wouldn't have been canonized to make one book.

The fact that those were the books that were canonized means who ever did it was completely confused, and the bible is confusing.

The Bible wasn't meant to be read as an individual book. It was meant to be a collection of books. It isn't one book, it is a collection of books. They were canonized because they in general fit an understanding. Yes, some contradict each other, but early church fathers, early religious leaders in Judaism, contradicted each other. That's life.

Again, the Bible wasn't meant to be read an an individual book. It was meant to be read as a collection of books.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

How do you reconcile this with evolution? How did animals with eternal life evolve from animals which didn't have eternal life?
If this damage was inherited you make it sound like some kind of genetic damage. Emotional damage can be passed on via nurturing, but inherited physical damage would be genetic.
I can understand that, if you believe in the immaculate conception, Jesus need not have shared any of the genetic material of Adam or Eve but could have been a newly created individual seperate from the rest of humanity. I don't believe in the immaculate conception though. I believe that Jesus was a man who inherited his genes from Mary and whoever his human father was. If it is true that Joseph was not the father then Mary must have had sex with some other man.
I think the degree to which we experience ourselves to be immortal is dependent on the degree to which we are able to identify with process. If we experience ourselves only as separate individuals then we know that what we experience ourselves as must die. If we experience ourselves as the process of life itself then we are identifying with something that does not die when our body dies. It is possible that the people who are represented in the Bible by the fictional characters "Adam and Eve" had a kind of group mind like that of ants or bees. In this case they had the potential for immortality because each new generation was the same consciousness in new bodies. So the death which came to them through "eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" was individual consciousness arising from a state of psychological insecurity which made them ego-embattled or selfish. This may seem far fetched, but what is love but a sense that we are not really seperate entities, a little glimpse of what it was like to be a specie individual - to have a group mind - to not be alone?
I see it more as a matter of knowledge bringing healing to minds than something magic bringing healing to genes, but I hope the bit about a happy-and-healthy future is correct.

To me, Jesus did Not use magic to heal and resurrect people. Jesus had God's holy spirit.
That same power or energizing spirit is what Jesus will use during his coming 1,000-year governmental rulership over Earth when No one will say, " I am sick " according to Isaiah 33:24, and No more death here on Earth - Isaiah 25:8. Our last enemy ' death ' will be brought to nothing according to 1 Corinthians 15:26.

How did Adam get life from non-life but, to me, that God ' breathed the breath of life' into lifeless Adam according to Genesis 2:7.
Adam, like the animals, simply ' returned ' to the dust of the ground according to Genesis 3:19
A person, or an animal, can Not ' return ' to a place they never were before.
So, like Adam, once the first animals received the 'breath of life' then they could pass on life to their offspring.
In other words, ALL of Adam died and went back to dust.
There was 'No post-mortem life' anywhere for lifeless Adam.

By Adam breaking God's Law he damaged his DNA and passed on genetic defects to us.
Jesus got his perfection Not from sinner Mary, but from his Heavenly Father. Joseph was Jesus' foster father.
ALL from father Adam sin - Romans 3:23 - Mary was from Adam.
If Mary was sinless she would Not die and would still be alive on Earth today. ( only sinners die )
God simply transferred the pre-human heavenly life of Jesus to Mary.
When God resurrected Jesus, Jesus did Not then have a physical body but got back his pre-human heavenly body.
The majority of mankind however will be resurrected with perfectly-healthy physical bodies having sound hearts and minds with the opportunity to gain ' everlasting life ' forever on Earth as originally offered to Adam before his downfall. Jesus will heal earth's nations according to Revelation 22:2.

 

[Riders]

Ok Fallingblood this is cut and pasted from WIKi if youd ont believe I have no power to make you see the truth that I get out of wiki, but I don't lie abut Wiki.

The historical reliability of the Gospels refers to the reliability and historic character of the four New Testament gospels as historical documents. Some scholars state that the authorship of the gospels is pseudepigraphic and unknown[48] and little in the four canonical gospels is considered to be historically reliable.[49][50][51][52


You use the gospel as main evidence and the gospel isn't reliable and neither is Josephus account.Ill go back and get another proof then I will go back and paste in the actual pages of wiki,

 

[Riders]

Historicity of Jesus - Wikipedia

This is the exact page from Wiki that it came from.

 

[Riders]

Heres the page for church attendance around the world and how its dropped on wiki. You can call me a liar all you want, I don't lie about Wiki.
Church attendance - Wikipedia


BTW the Christian church itself says attendance has gone down, and I have read an article in a Christian magazine on decline of church attendance this year.
Apparently according to you Christians themselves lie about their own religion.

 

[wizanda]

Who would say you're condemned for believing in Yeshua!?

Sorry typo, oops...

You're not condemned if you don't believe in Yeshua; you're condemned for not listening to his words, and as John contradicts him entirely, it shows people aren't listening to him.

 

[Riders]

This is also taken from the Wiki. It says here the new testament was written primarily to Jewish followers of Jesus. It only shows how I'm right in saying the New Testament wasn't even written for this generation and culture.

The canonical Bible varies depending on traditions or groups; a number of Bible canons have evolved, with overlapping and diverging contents.[2] The Christian Old Testament overlaps with the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint; the Hebrew Bible is known in Judaism as the Tanakh. The New Testament is a collection of writings by early Christians, believed to be mostly Jewish disciples of Christ, written in first-century Koine Greek. These early Christian Greek writings consist of narratives, letters, and apocalyptic writings. Among Christian denominations there is some disagreement about the contents of the canon, primarily in the Apocrypha, a list of works that are regarded with varying levels of respect.


They cant even agree upon which book should be canonized, the bibles are different. Which bible do you allude to when you use the bible as proof Jesus existed?

Theres so many divisions amoung churches which bible is right its not believable, why would I trust the Holy Bible when Christian scholors couldn't even come up with the right books to canonize?

 

[1robin]

I love G.K. Chesterton, and he does have a point here. But it isn't an "either/or" situation. I never met anyone in the mental hospital who thought they were a God. I met someone who thought he was Jesus. He collected Christmas cards claiming they were birthday cards for himself. And I thought at times that I was Jesus. I smiled at the appropriateness of being given sandals to wear from the used clothing supply when my sneakers were thrown under the shower by other patients. I saw a special significance in the fact that I had attended a retirement party for a workmate just before going crazy and being locked up at which we were supposed to be all dressed in black, but I forgot and was dressed in blue. There were thirteen of us and someone jokingly called it "the Last Supper". And then, after being given the sandals to wear, I went home and tried to kill myself with an overdose of paracetamol. Realising it wasn't going to give me a painless death, I rang the hospital and they came and got me in an ambulance. When I fought with nurses in an attempt to find something to slit my wrists I was drugged and woke the next morning strapped to a hospital bed in a position characteristic of the crucifixion. I felt that the whole of human history was going to end in failure because of me, that all the suffering of every human would have been for nothing because of my own personal failure. I begged the doctors and nurses to kill me. The next day the paracetamol detox was finished and the police came to take me to the mental hospital. My way of explaining the experience of myself and others is that we all have a "Christ-nature" - that our original instinctive orientation is toward unconditional love and that the neurotic ego which forms over that can break down and bring us in contact with that original nature. The problem is that, being neurotic, we don't have the integrity necessary to live that nature, hence the fact that I was totally crushed by the idea that I might be the one on whom the whole salvation of the human race depended.

The reason people end up in mental hospitals has little, necessarily, to do with what they believe about themselves. It has to do with whether they can function socially. I could believe I was a God from the planet Zod, but as long as I go to work and do my job adequately and don't yell and scream at people on public transport or take my clothes off in public, I won't end up in a mental hospital. I understand, however, that G.K. Chesterton is talking about verbally expressed absolute certainty. We can't know of certainty that nobody tells us about.

Chesterton was not speaking about what causes a person to be committed, he was referring to the massive disparity between the insane and non insane population as it refers to confidence in their identities or beliefs.

Just because I have never had the opportunity to and because I am curious, can you take a paragraph and explain how the thought processes of a less than sane (or mentally unbalanced) person differ from those we consider sane (or mentally balanced)? You mentioned many things you did, and the ideas you had, but I want to know about how the mental process works or is it purely chemical in nature. Also, since you are making some extraordinary claims is there anyway I can verify your condition was what you say it was?

I recognise that Laing's comments, powerful as I may find them, do not carry much weight in a rational argument. As you say he doesn't, at least within that quote, provide any evidence. Laing was a divisive figure. Many of his fellow psychiatrists considered him a lunatic and felt that his ideas were too dangerous for students to be exposed to. He was a popular figure amongst the counter-culture, but is perhaps most appreciated by people, like myself, who have experienced psychosis. We may read his writings with a deep sense of relief that someone at least "gets us". And, apparently, he had a unique ability to bring people out of a catatonic state simply by sitting with them in an attitude of empathy and acceptance. Not all of his writing is in the same style. He did write books in which he used case-studies to back up his conclusions. He wasn't all LSD-inspired stream-of-consciousness, but that was part of what he did.

I am open to thre main categories of argument.

1. Arguments from reason - there are countless subcategories but in general these issues appeal to logic.
2. Arguments from experience - however these are usually only produce certainty to the one having the experience.
3. Claims to brute spiritual truths - these also have many necessary foundational requirements before they can be used or examined.

In my own experience the least reliable arguments made in any category are what I refer to as metaphysical speculation. They are arguments concerning metaphysical issues about which the one making them has no access to or sufficient evidence for. These are officially called gnostic in nature, and are the most dangerous type of claims to make.

I'm glad you bring this up because it is an issue which goes to the heart of the philosophy I express in my book How to Be Free by Joe Blow and other writing. Freedoms falls into two categories. There are freedoms from something and freedoms to do something. As long as we want to do anything which is against our own best interest or against the best interest of others, then we can't have the freedom to do anything we want. On the other hand, if we don't want to do anything which is against our best interest or against the best interest of others, then we can be free to do anything we want. How do we get to that state? We have thoughts about doing destructive things and we have emotions, which may include the desire to do destructive things. These thoughts and emotions are not actions. It is the actions which would be a problem. As long as we don't act on our desires to do destructive things, we can have full freedom to think and feel what we like. We have no control over the initial thought or feeling. Our choice is whether we will respond to it by trying to repress its free play in our mind or whether we will allow it freedom there and exercise control simply by not acting on it. My contention is that those of us who accept our thoughts and feelings unconditionally as artefacts, not necessarily as something to be trusted, are in a better position to understand ourselves, because more of our thinking takes place on the conscious level rather than being repressed into the subconscious. And, I believe, we are better able to restrain ourselves from destructive behaviour because our attitude of self-acceptance has a pacifying effect. A lot of people are driven to destructive behaviour by inner turmoil.

I do not think that most of what you mentioned could ever be achieved. No human can take away another power to will, and our moral failing seem to have always been part of human nature and always will. So the intellectual utopia you speak about can never come to pass. However let me just make a few points here about freewill.

Love can only exist if freewill exists (a kiss from two lips on your eye phone has nothing to do with love because the ipad had no choice), freewill does not exist until we are free to choose the evil or the good. God loved us so much he did not make us automatons. He made us free moral agents which could chose to obey him or betray him even if it cost us and others dearly. Only if that was the case and will always be the case this side of the dirt could true love exist.

So I don't see sexual licence as the only alternative to sexual repression. I don't consider myself to be a particularly sexually repressed individual, but I've only had sexual intercourse about three times in my life. I masturbate. I fantasise, even writing and publishing my fantasies. I watch porn. Now I'm not advocating my exact approach here. I'm single. I have no children. What I would say is that all that is required to not be sexually repressed is to unconditionally accept and enjoy all of the erotic sensations which come to one without acting upon them in any way which would cause problems for oneself or others. Repression occurs when we fight against some thought or feeling. Acting upon it is not necessary to avoid repression.

I disagree with your core claim here. It is very well known that the worst possible way to be fulfilled is to indulge our whims with abandon. As a prayer councilor, a several decades long theological researcher, and a rabid reader of Christian counseling literature, I can tell you to a certainty that those who are most hopeless and unsatisfied are wealthy children who have recklessly gratified almost all their own desires. Physical desires only increase as they are indulged, you want to find the most satisfied and content then they are those who are most disciple and chaste. The old saying "everything in moderation" is as true today as it ever was.

 

[Riders]

I disagree with your core claim here. It is very well known that the worst possible way to be fulfilled is to indulge our whims with abandon. As a prayer councilor, a several decades long theological researcher, and a rabid reader of Christian counseling literature, I can tell you to a certainty that those who are most hopeless and unsatisfied are wealthy children who have recklessly gratified almost all their own desires. Physical desires only increase as they are indulged, you want to find the most satisfied and content then they are those who are most disciple and chaste. The old saying "everything in moderation" is as true today as it ever was.


Marrias in America end up in divorce, 50 percent or more do. many of those are conservative Christians who saved themselves for marriage and had affairs.


Do you know how many conservative Baptist, and other churches,their men Ive either had sex with or phone sex or watched porn with? A lot. Waiting to marriage doesn't mean youll be happier and less likely to sin.Many have affairs anyways.

 

[1robin]

I'm coming to this matter from a different perspective. For me the existence of the supernatural is not on the table.

That is called the fallacy of begging the question. If you presume the conclusion you are as unable to follow the evidence as you admitted you are above.

So I actually take roughly the same approach to religious writing that I would take to a psychotic person. How much truth can I find in their madness? In both cases the truth will be expressed in symbols and in terms of archetypes such as "God" and "the Devil". The truth needs to be decoded.

The truth only needs to be discovered and never ever decoded. The truth is a set of objective facts concerning reality and requires only agreement.

We come back to the pantheistic view of "God" and the ability of the honest individual to give voice to the creative principle of the universe.

Well lets concentrate on your first statement. All the evidence we have is consistent with the absolute fact that space, time, and matter (the universe) began to exist around 15 billions years ago. Since you do not have a God which exists independently of the universe then you must believe that the universe (your God) caused the universe (your God) to come into being by nothing and from nothing. Even atheists will balk at that arrangement. Ideas do not get any more self contradictory than that. Where as if you believe in an eternal God who is independent of the universe then everything is accounted for without having to commit intellectual suicide.

As for forgiving sins, I have made the argument that "sin" is selfishness which often arises from a sense of guilt.

You have the order out of whack. Selfishness produces sin, which once realized results in guilt. That order makes perfect sense and corresponds to reality, your order contradicts reality and even logic.

Who is Satan and what is Hell? Satan is a mythological figure also described as "The Accuser" and "The Father of Lies".

Your making very well understood and acknowledged mistakes. You beg the question by presuming the conclusion, then you simply declare that your presumptions are true. This is to get everything out of order. You simply declare that the conclusion you prefer is true, then demand reality adapt accordingly. You have no idea (because you have no way to know) who Satan actually is, yet you begin an argument by assuming that not only can you know, but that you do know who Satan is, then you simply overwrite reality with your preference. That is not to make arguments, it is to yell at traffic.

And the real Jesus was not the body but the message. The resurrection was the new life the message had after his body died.

The overwhelming consensus as to Jesus among NT historians (those most qualified to know) was that Jesus existed historically and was very likely exactly who he claimed to be.

So none of these claims seem irrational to me. Symbols speak to us on a deeper level which reason may not reach. "Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father." John 16:25 This seems to support my contention that Jesus was using symbols which spoke to people's hearts, because he didn't have a way to reach their rational minds.

No, facts speak to us far better than symbols. Jesus spoke in analogies, parables, apocalyptic literary styles, prophecy, symbolically, and plainly, etc...... any Christian will tell you that his plain statements require far less investigation to understand that any of the rest. In fact the most confusing passage in the bible is the one that contained the symbols translated as "666".

The question I'm asking is whether there would have been an Inquisition or the slaughter of the Cathars or the burning of the "witches" etc. if there had never been a Jesus.

The various evils endemic to human nature would have been far worse than those committed in spite of his existence. You want to see truly rampant evil then look to the great atheist utopias of just recent times. There have never been any Christian Stalin's. I will post two great scholars way of putting this:

"The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence, that it may be truly said, that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind, than all the disquisitions of philosophers and than all the exhortations of moralists."

William Lecky One of Britain’s greatest secular historians.

He was the meekest and lowliest of all the sons of men, yet he spoke of coming on the clouds of heaven with the glory of God. He was so austere that evil spirits and demons cried out in terror at his coming, yet he was so genial and winsome and approachable that the children loved to play with him, and the little ones nestled in his arms. His presence at the innocent gaiety of a village wedding was like the presence of sunshine.

No one was half so compassionate to sinners, yet no one ever spoke such red hot scorching words about sin. A bruised reed he would not break, his whole life was love, yet on one occasion he demanded of the Pharisees how they ever expected to escape the damnation of hell. He was a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions, yet for sheer stark realism He has all of our stark realists soundly beaten. He was a servant of all, washing the disciples feet, yet masterfully He strode into the temple, and the hucksters and moneychangers fell over one another to get away from the mad rush and the fire they saw blazing in His eyes.

He saved others, yet at the last Himself He did not save. There is nothing in history like the union of contrasts which confronts us in the gospels. The mystery of Jesus is the mystery of divine personality.

Scottish Theologian James Stuart

I don't claim to understand the Big Bang Theory and I'm not sure what BGVT is. I did a search and didn't come up with anything. I feel no need to understand the origin of the universe. If someone works it out I'll give their explanation a listen. Maybe the universe began some time in some way, maybe it has existed always. I'm not sure how knowledge of the beginning of the universe, if there was one, would impact how I decide to live my life.

Well then you ought to seek out that understanding because if you already had you would see that Pantheism does not fit with what is known about reality.

I don't see pantheism as a way of explaining things, but as a mode of perception. I have given explanations for things, but those explanations don't arise from pantheism. Pantheism is simply a frame of reference within which such explanations can be placed. To me, pantheism is simply the view that the universe is a natural system within which order and complexity can come into being without the requirement for anything external to that system. (I recognise that I'm adding to the official definition.) Pantheism, in my view, does not promise any kind of explanation for anything. If we want explanations then we have to look to science and recognise that it involves a process of achieving closer approximations to the truth. We can't expect absolute certainties.

What you seem to keep descripting sounds less like a religion and more like what a few teen agers would come up with after smoking a few joints and pounding a few pints.

Have I claimed to know anything?

You most certainly have, you stated exactly what was true concerning Satan

I'm happy to discuss any piece of scripture you want to chose. It's really up to you to find a passage I can't give a non-supernatural interpretation to. Most of the time I don't think it will be all that surprising whether I think something is a parable, apocalyptic imagery, prophecy etc., as parables are usually presented as such, apocalyptic imagery is apocalyptic imagery regardless of whether you feel the apocalypse is something supernatural or not and predictions about the future, likewise, are prophecies regardless of how we interpret them. As to whether we can resolve whether I am right or wrong, I have my doubts about that. Reality is what proves us right or wrong. You believe in a supernatural God, so if you are right then the reality which will prove me wrong will be that supernatural God. If there is no supernatural God then that won't happen, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you will have an encounter with reality that dissuades you.

The most logical foundation for a debate would be the common ground of science because you do not share my understanding of biblical scripture. So lets start with science and then see who faith and understanding of scripture best lines up with reality, and the best place to start is at the beginning.

So you and I ought to be able to agree that all the evidence we have suggests that:

About 15 billions years ago time, space, and matter came into being from non-being.

So if we can agree to that then we can see who's faith and understanding of revelation best accounts for and explains this initial event. You can go first.

 

[1robin]

Yes, emotions are physical. They are experiences of the flesh. But there are immaterial relationships between people which allow for the communication of emotions. If I see an old friend on the street and feel happy, the fact that I feel happy is not just a direct physical response, like a dog salivating at the smell of meat. My physical response is because of something immaterial - our relationship as friends. Each of us is a physical entity and the things we have done together are physical activities, but our relationship is something immaterial. Similarly, the words I'm typing are physical, but the meaning that is expressed by those words is immaterial. So for me the realm of the spiritual is this realm of immaterial things which nevertheless come from and influence the material world. None of these things contravenes the laws of nature.

For the most part I can agree with that but there are some subtleties here that I won't go into for now.

When you say that he was "spiritually resurrected from death", do you mean that his body was not resurrected, only his spirit, or do you mean that his body was resurrected through the action of something spiritual?

No, I mean that the force required to bring him back to life was not based in natural law.

I think this is an example of mythologising. It may be that there was a big audience and only a small amount of food and yet they were not dissatisfied because of the sustenance they got from Jesus' message. But what makes the story most meaningful to me is to treat it like a parable. It isn't a parable. I recognise that. Jesus is not telling the story. But the idea of having too little and then finding that, through Jesus' agency, there is a surplus, speaks to my vision of a new world beyond lies and selfishness. At the moment we feel we don't have enough, and, in fact, many are starving. There isn't enough to go around. We are like 5000 people fighting over a fish a few loaves of bread. But if we take on board what I feel to be Jesus' message of forgiveness of sins, i.e. liberation from the sense of guilt which makes us selfish, then we will be so easily satisfied that there will be enough for all and plenty left over, because we will produce for others far more than we consume from others.

So your basic positions always rule out the simple understanding a reading of a sentence supplies and instead what the sentence plainly states is always wrong if it does not line up with your preferred conclusion? The entire purpose of that event and countless others is to provide the reader with examples of the supernatural authority and power which make Christ relevant and meaningful. There are procedures that have been perfected over 2000 years or longer to accurately and consistently interpret biblical scripture, I can assure you they result in my understanding and not yours but if you want to pick a certain verse as an example we can properly investigate it to see whether I or you are being consistent with well established scholarship.

I can understand that. I feel the same way about supernatural descriptions of Heaven. I can see that mine for you is far too meagre. But yours, for me, has all the meaning or profundity of Walt Disney's Fantasyland. It took me a long time to arrive at my concept of Heaven. All of this has taken me a long time. As a teenager I was fascinated by the moral vision expressed in the Gospel of Matthew. I found it painfully condemning, but I couldn't simply dismiss it. On the other hand I had no belief in the supernatural elements. Gradually I've come to see symbolic meaning in what is presented as supernatural, but it has not always been an easy process as the neurotic mind is not well grounded to think about such challenging subjects. If one has faith then I can see that it is possible to hand oneself over to a dogma and have the security that comes from the fellowship of others who share one's beliefs. To go by one's own path in search of meaning is an uncertain enterprise. It means grappling with the possibility that one may be on the side of evil. In time, an inner calm and openness and an increased facility in tackling challenges, give one a sense of being on solid ground at last. Those moments of vertigo, as if one were walking on a rickety bridge across a bottomless pit, disappear. But still the meanings one finds in terms like "Heaven" are mostly intellectual. There are moments when you don't just see it, but feel a touch of its reality. I'm so alienated, my thinking is so crooked and my heart so closed in self-protection, that I have to try to find my way by first thinking something, then saying it, and hoping that one day I'll be able to feel and live it. But the supernatural is not helpful to me because it is not a part of the world in which I live. Stories of supernatural events don't touch my lived experience, so humble as my definition of heaven is, it is the only one I can use.

From what I can see you instead decide what conclusion it is you prefer or lines up with a previous conclusion and then you simply interpret reality in such a way (even if it almost always contradicts accepted scholarship and other evidence) that it lines up accordingly. I find plenty of declarations as to what things are in your posts but I find few arguments and even less evidence as to why your conclusions are actually true. That is not to say your are not intelligent or well spoken. I am saying that there are very well thought out and established ways of getting to the truth of various types of arguments and you simply do not seem to be very experienced in those practices. They are not intuitive things that any smart person can quickly figure out, many of them are things no one will know unless a person is as weird and obsessed as I am about these issues.

My understanding is that the four gospels in the New Testament were not written down by people who witnessed the events they relate. I can understand that the claim by the writers to have been visited by the Holy Spirit carries weight with you, but since I don't believe in the supernatural it carries no weight with me. My aim is to find meaning in the words attributed to Jesus. I don't believe the gospels are trustworthy. They talk about magical events which I don't think literally happened. Also there appear to be discrepancies between the accounts which argue against their having been guided by some infallible "Holy Spirit". (I can't argue this point myself. I'm simply going by the evidence presented in Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) by Bart D. Ehrman

I am very well aware of Mr. Ehrman, you should become equally aware of Dr. James White. He eats Ehrman alive in debates, and so does Dr. Craig. The bible emphatically states that some of the NT writers witnessed supernatural events, and even if it didn't the bible also claims the Holy Spirit (since he has observed all events) is the ultimate author of the entire bible. However all of this is out of order. Any textual debate must begin with the accuracy of modern translations of the bible. Who cares what the originals said if our modern bible's did not accurately translate it? If we are going to do this lets do so in the proper order.

I'm not "wagering my immoral soul" on a matter of semantics. I can understand that you feel that I am making that wager by not accepting a supernatural Christian belief, but I'm in this situation not because I like the word "pantheism" but because I don't believe in the supernatural and thus have no choice but to look for meaning in the world I can directly experience. For better or worse, honesty is the central value by which I've tried to live my life. Clearly the kind of Christianity you are suggesting would only be open to me if I believed in it. Even assuming there are all sorts of advantages that come with such a belief, to lie and say that I accept the existence of a supernatural deity and a supernatural saviour would not open them to me.

Let me clarify.

1. Pantheism as more of a philosophical word view as opposed to a religious relationship with a deity is not a proposition which is either directly deduced from mountains of evidence or validated to a certainty by personal experience. It seems to be merely a preference which cannot be confirmed or denied until it is too late to change your mind.
2. Christianity is religion of the type which is deduced directly from mountains of evidence and which also offers a self veridical (properly basic belief) experience by which the intellectual proposition is confirmed.

So if you adopt position 1 you are making a wager which if false will not be known until it is too late to change your mind. As a Christian the same is not true of my own faith. I did gain confirmation even long before it was too late for me to change my mind. So I am wagering nothing.

I don't feel that my immortal soul is in peril. I believe in a collective soul, that we are all, at base, life itself, and that culture is a kind of soul of humanity. I don't believe in a personal soul seperate from the body.

Christ said that when he comes to judge between believers and non-believers it will be the same as it the days of Noah. As in those who were killed by the flood did not expect it until it happened.

I have no fear of God. This may be due to ignorance, but it is true all the same. I am what I am. If there is a supernatural God then he will have to dispose of me as he sees fit.

Well, lets see what God says about that.

New International Version
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

I would not like to be seen as a representative of pantheism. I'm sure many pantheists would look at what I've written here and say : "What is this crazy talk?" I use the term merely to indicate that I accept that the term "God" can have a useful meaning, but that I don't believe in the supernatural. Pantheism has no prophet. I don't even classify it as a religion. It is more akin to a school of philosophy. And I've read no works by pantheists (except maybe William Blake who is sometimes so categorised, though perhaps not by himself), so I can hardly claim any authority on the subject. All of this stuff is just coming out of my own head, but what can we do but use the mind nature has given us to try to make sense of things. Of course we read books and listen to people and assess what they say for believability and usefulness, adopting what we can use and rejecting what we can't. Some may find a belief system which meets all of their needs, and there the search ends, but others will not find themselves able to accept any made-to-measure belief system. For them, their worldview will remain a work-in-progress.

This is why I mentioned that unless Pantheism has some objective claims it stands upon it is really hard to evaluate.

Ok, our posts have grown beyond my ability to control them. Please concentrate on my second post of the three where I replied to you.

 

[1robin]

I disagree with your core claim here. It is very well known that the worst possible way to be fulfilled is to indulge our whims with abandon. As a prayer councilor, a several decades long theological researcher, and a rabid reader of Christian counseling literature, I can tell you to a certainty that those who are most hopeless and unsatisfied are wealthy children who have recklessly gratified almost all their own desires. Physical desires only increase as they are indulged, you want to find the most satisfied and content then they are those who are most disciple and chaste. The old saying "everything in moderation" is as true today as it ever was.


Marrias in America end up in divorce, 50 percent or more do. many of those are conservative Christians who saved themselves for marriage and had affairs.


Do you know how many conservative Baptist, and other churches,their men Ive either had sex with or phone sex or watched porn with? A lot. Waiting to marriage doesn't mean youll be happier and less likely to sin.Many have affairs anyways.

For the last time, you misspell more words than even I do but I can deal with that, but the way you format your posts is simply not going to work. Can you not see that your posts look radically different from most of the rest?

Either

1. Ask how to properly format your posts so that a debate is possible.

Or

2. Please do not respond to any more posts of mine.

 

[Riders]

Aussies is formatted the same way mine is and I never have issues with folks not being able to read my posts. Only you so I don't believe you.

 

[Aussiescribbler]

To me, Jesus did Not use magic to heal and resurrect people. Jesus had God's holy spirit.
That same power or energizing spirit is what Jesus will use during his coming 1,000-year governmental rulership over Earth when No one will say, " I am sick " according to Isaiah 33:24, and No more death here on Earth - Isaiah 25:8. Our last enemy ' death ' will be brought to nothing according to 1 Corinthians 15:26.

How did Adam get life from non-life but, to me, that God ' breathed the breath of life' into lifeless Adam according to Genesis 2:7.
Adam, like the animals, simply ' returned ' to the dust of the ground according to Genesis 3:19
A person, or an animal, can Not ' return ' to a place they never were before.
So, like Adam, once the first animals received the 'breath of life' then they could pass on life to their offspring.
In other words, ALL of Adam died and went back to dust.
There was 'No post-mortem life' anywhere for lifeless Adam.

By Adam breaking God's Law he damaged his DNA and passed on genetic defects to us.
Jesus got his perfection Not from sinner Mary, but from his Heavenly Father. Joseph was Jesus' foster father.
ALL from father Adam sin - Romans 3:23 - Mary was from Adam.
If Mary was sinless she would Not die and would still be alive on Earth today. ( only sinners die )
God simply transferred the pre-human heavenly life of Jesus to Mary.
When God resurrected Jesus, Jesus did Not then have a physical body but got back his pre-human heavenly body.
The majority of mankind however will be resurrected with perfectly-healthy physical bodies having sound hearts and minds with the opportunity to gain ' everlasting life ' forever on Earth as originally offered to Adam before his downfall. Jesus will heal earth's nations according to Revelation 22:2.

I suppose we just look at things differently. I don't see the Bible as a scientific text which can give us insight into genetics and life-expectancy. It is true that our psychological state has a major impact on our physical health, so worrying about being sinful could certainly shorten someone's life. Life is a process of birth and death and change. Is any human being really so special that they were worthy of being preserved intact for eternity? I'm not. I have my limited usefulness, but I hope that those who come after me will be an improvement and those who come after them will be an improvement again. A state of eternal physical life for individual humans would be a state of stagnation unworthy of the majesty of life.

 

[Aussiescribbler]

Just because I have never had the opportunity to and because I am curious, can you take a paragraph and explain how the thought processes of a less than sane (or mentally unbalanced) person differ from those we consider sane (or mentally balanced)? You mentioned many things you did, and the ideas you had, but I want to know about how the mental process works or is it purely chemical in nature. Also, since you are making some extraordinary claims is there anyway I can verify your condition was what you say it was?

I'll try to describe my own experience with some framework as to how I understand what was happening. We have a conscious character structure or ego which consists of our habitual ways of thinking about ourselves, of explaining ourselves to ourselves. It gives us our sense of who we are and is the basis from which we interact coherently with our environment and other people. I tried to incorporate a belief system into my character structure which was incompatible with it. It put me in a double bind. I needed the belief structure but my own perception told me that parts of it were untrustworthy and harmful for me. Because I needed it so much - as a source of relief from existential despair - when it conflicted with my sense of myself I was sucked into a whirlpool of doubt about myself which shattered the integrity of my character structure.

There are different degrees to the psychotic state, but I'll try to summarise. There is a great restlessness - the mind leaping from one thought to another, some blissful, some terrifying, some erotic. I thought an apocalypse was happening. There would be chaos and there would be spiritual awakening. It was all some grand unfolding plan. I thought my doctor was a famous New Age guru. I thought the nurses were going to start having sex with me. I thought the nurses were going to bite off my fingers and start eating them. There is a need for some grand magical answer which will bring meaning to it all. There is the need for something so exciting it can block out the fear. And then the fear comes anyway. And then on to something else. Strangers seemed to be people I knew. The mind is restless, but it is also open to believing anything and open to seeing special meaning. The outer world is seen in the light of what the mind needs to reconcile. A strange coincidence or something heard on television which seems to relate to the dilemma will seem to be a personal message. So it can be understood this way - there is an excruciatingly painful crisis which sends the mind shooting beyond the bounds of reason in search either of relief or a solution. I doesn't come. The anti-psychotics slow your mind down. And, in my case, what followed was weeks of terrible depression leading to shock treatment.

My take on the chemical imbalance argument is that experiences lead to thoughts which lead to emotions. The body's messengers of emotions are chemical. The emotions can feed back on the thoughts. If I think lots of depressing thoughts that will make me feel depressed, i.e. it will change the chemical balance of my brain. I may then think how terrible it is to feel depressed, which causes a bigger change to the brain chemistry. I think the reason there is so much emphasis on the idea of chemical imbalance is because we have drugs which can help people to cope, whereas looking at the holistic picture opens a can of worms. Are there aspects of our broader culture which are harmful to our mental health? Is the behaviour of family members a contributory factor to someone's illness? And, when it comes to treatment, there is much disagreement on what forms of non-drug treatment are effective and the best of them are long and time-consuming.

As for me verifying the details I shared of my own experience, I can't provide any evidence. This was twenty years ago. I'm not sure I've even told most of that to anyone else. The bit about being strapped to the hospital bed I mentioned in my book, but all the Jesus delusion stuff I've never had much of a reason to share. Maybe with my psychiatrist. I have to concede that my memory of the going away party may be unreliable. This is one of the problems when one has experienced a psychosis. I can remember some weird little detail from my life and I have to ask myself "Did it really happen like that, after all I experienced a psychosis? Maybe it messed with my memories." I don't think it did, to any significant degree. Actually I have a clearer memory of being psychotic than of the events which took place during the long depressions. But who knows?

I am open to thre main categories of argument.

1. Arguments from reason - there are countless subcategories but in general these issues appeal to logic.
2. Arguments from experience - however these are usually only produce certainty to the one having the experience.
3. Claims to brute spiritual truths - these also have many necessary foundational requirements before they can be used or examined.

In my own experience the least reliable arguments made in any category are what I refer to as metaphysical speculation. They are arguments concerning metaphysical issues about which the one making them has no access to or sufficient evidence for. These are officially called gnostic in nature, and are the most dangerous type of claims to make.

I'm not sure we can make too much headway because my approach when it comes to religion is to begin with the assumption that there is no such thing as the supernatural and that belief in the supernatural is the product of a mental disorder. I think I can do a pretty good job of explaining religion within that context. Now you can say that I'm presupposing what I'm setting out to prove, but I'm not trying to test my disbelief in the supernatural. I'm trying to redeem religious writing. I'm trying to show that it can have value for people who don't believe in the supernatural. I'm not trying to dissuade you from believing in the supernatural, but I feel you are trying to persuade me to believe in the supernatural. If that is your only purpose in engaging in the discussion then you are wasting your time. That said, I've been loving the exchange. I don't have to agree with someone to find it stimulating to have a discussion with them.

 

[Aussiescribbler]

I do not think that most of what you mentioned could ever be achieved. No human can take away another power to will, and our moral failing seem to have always been part of human nature and always will. So the intellectual utopia you speak about can never come to pass. However let me just make a few points here about freewill.

Love can only exist if freewill exists (a kiss from two lips on your eye phone has nothing to do with love because the ipad had no choice), freewill does not exist until we are free to choose the evil or the good. God loved us so much he did not make us automatons. He made us free moral agents which could chose to obey him or betray him even if it cost us and others dearly. Only if that was the case and will always be the case this side of the dirt could true love exist.

I'm not sure I said anything about anyone taking away another's will to power. What I'm talking about is purely voluntary. If someone wants to be free they can be, but if they would rather remain unhappy and unfulfilled that's their choice. The way I see things happening is two-fold. Some find freedom. Others will face the dilemma of the old ways not working for them any more because their game is naked for the world to see. It isn't about anyone changing the world. It is about an evolution which nothing will be able to stop, because it is the realisation of "the Kingdom of Heaven" - the healing of the "schizophrenic" mind of "God". In humans the creative principle of the universe has an intelligent conscious mind, but it has been fractured by our conflicts with each other and with our deeper loving nature.

Free will is a tricky question. We certainly feel like we have it. We make choices. Or do we? Would it be more accurate to say that choices take place in us? Our output is determined by our input. Nothing is in us which didn't come from outside of us - genes, food, ideas, the influence of experiences - although all the factors mix and transmute within us. Our original ideas are the offspring of ideas from others which came together in a kind of chemical reaction in us. You would not be a Christian if someone had not introduced you to Christianity, so, no matter how much importance you find in it, you only have it because you and it collided in the unfolding net of cause and effect, feeding back upon itself, that is the universal system. But we are active agents. We don't just zip around like cosmic pinballs. We have no choice over who we are, all of us being determined by the flow of factors into the position we occupy in the universal system. Yet who we are is someone with passions and preferences and determination to realise some kind of potential. Do we chose the evil or the good though? That's a hard one. I feel that I'm motivated by self-interest. If I do something which I think will help others it is because an improvement in the world is an improvement in the world I'm living in and, even if the improvement doesn't touch me, I get a sense of meaning from the act. I like to lose myself in something creative and feel some kind of self-actualisation. And, of course, if it involves direct contact with someone, interactions in which I'm doing something to help someone are likely to be more friendly, and thus rewarding for me, than ones in which I'm just trying to get something for myself. But what about people who do evil? My view is that everybody is doing the best they can. This is implicit in the input/output concept. So I see evil doers as people lost, through no fault of their own, in a network of bad thinking. If I can do even a little bit towards the task of providing the key which will unlock them from their hell then I will feel like the luckiest person in the world.

I disagree with your core claim here. It is very well known that the worst possible way to be fulfilled is to indulge our whims with abandon. As a prayer councilor, a several decades long theological researcher, and a rabid reader of Christian counseling literature, I can tell you to a certainty that those who are most hopeless and unsatisfied are wealthy children who have recklessly gratified almost all their own desires. Physical desires only increase as they are indulged, you want to find the most satisfied and content then they are those who are most disciple and chaste. The old saying "everything in moderation" is as true today as it ever was.

I think you may have misunderstood. I'm not talking about living for self-indulgence. A person can live a responsible life in which what is most important to them is their studies or their work or their family and still allow themselves to think freely and feel freely. It just means that, if they feel angry about something they allow themselves to feel it fully and think whatever angry thoughts come to them so that it burns out quickly and they can move on. Or if they feel sexually aroused they allow themselves to enjoy the feeling and think the thoughts that come with the feeling and then return to what they were doing. It isn't about making those things the focus of one's life, the things one turns to for sustenance. It's about not amplifying the influence of those things over one's life by fighting against them. To pick an extreme example, think of the ascetics who, because they felt that the flesh was an obstacle to their spiritual progress, would find ways to torture themselves. In fighting against something which they felt threatened their spirituality they became totally obsessed with causing themselves pain, which was just as much of a self-obsession and thus retreat from love or generosity to others as it would have been if they lost themselves in an orgy of pleasure.

Why do physical desires increase as they are indulged? If they were nothing but physical desires, we would expect them to be satisfied and then arise again later. I think that, where they increase as they are indulged, there is a psychological factor involved. It may be that the physical pleasure is filling an emotional void. Some people eat too much because they are looking for a sense of comfort. Some look for affection and acceptance in promiscuous sexual encounters. Another factor can be that of the forbidden. Some people seek out a pleasure that they have been taught they should feel guilty about. Then when they feel guilty they need to escape from that feeling and try to blot it out with the same pleasure, which leads to a negative feedback loop. Also, if someone is taught to live a very disciplined life which they find empty and frustrating, then a desire may build up to really cut loose and use whatever was forbidden in that lifestyle as a cathartic rebellion against the oppressiveness of it all.

All I'm saying is that I think it is therapeutic to allow our mind to roam where it will (at those times when we are not focused on a task) and to allow our emotions to play themselves out to the full. Do you not do this? If not, do you really feel that something bad would happen if you did?