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Jerusalem as a word means God's peace. Jeru, an ancient name for God, and salem, a variant of shalom, meaning peace. God's peace is not like man's peace. Look at the history of Jerusalem. It is bloody. One of the most fought for cities on earth, the city of God's peace.
1. What exactly is the universal consciousness? Would that not be god? What made the universe consciousness finally react? How long has the universal consciousness been around?That is why you shouldn't skim over replies and then ask the answered questions again.
I'll copy paste for you again.
1. The universal consciousness created the universe along with energy. From a single point called Hiranyagarbha, everything began.
The energy shapes and evolves the universe with time.
All life exists for 4,320,000,000 years and stays inactive or dead for the next 4,320,000,000 years and it goes on and on.
Life starts from the smallest of beings and gradually attains more complex bodies and developed intelligence.
It is believed that humans came to be after 4.2 billion years and are still evolving.
2. There exists what Abrahamic faiths called angels. In our faith they exists as Devas in alternative dimensions or planets with spiritually and technologically superior beings. They often assist lower worlds in changing the course of the species but only sometimes.
3. Now on suffering, DEAth and evil:
As the Buddha said, suffering comes from desire (more appropriately attachment).
God doesn't allow suffering because it's an illusion and a personal state.
Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita says:
O son of Kuntī, the nonpermanent appearance of happiness and distress, and their disappearance in due course, are like the appearance and disappearance of winter and summer seasons. They arise from sense perception, O scion of Bharata, and one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.
- Bhagavad Gita 2:14
The 5 senses perceive the objects and are processed by the mind. Therefore, based on his perception, he might perceive something to be good or wicked.
Example:
When gay marriage is legalized, the ones with sane minds will be happy for a victory in human rights. But some will be disheartened. Due to that they'll perceive it as the source of their unpleasantness. They'll try and try to repeal it but will be unsuccessful. Slowly this bigotry will grab a hold of their minds and cause them misery, all because of their mindset.
So, God isn't responsible for suffering as he's beyond the cause and effect of this material world.
The root of suffering is ones personal aversion to the truth, arrogance and more importantly attachments to the objects of this world.
4. Why is there evil:
While contemplating the objects of the senses, a person develops attachment for them, and from such attachment lust develops, and from lust anger arises.
From anger, delusion arises, and from delusion bewilderment of memory. When memory is bewildered, intelligence is lost, and when intelligence is lost, one falls down again into the material pool.
(Source of all evil and miseries)
-Bhagavad Gita
All living things exists in this material world, made up of energy and universal consciousness (the soul)
Now these beings though part of Brahman, acts independently with each other. Now imagine a field with a bunch of cars being driven by people.
The people is the soul and the car is the body. So when they interact with each other, they will surely crash with a few. The independent bodies driven by the independent souls comes across both good and bad in this life. When he's with bad, evil will follow, when he meets good, good will follow.
Also, by ones previously attained karma, he encounters the situations where he'll be treated in the way as he has treated others in the past, good or evil wise.
The gita speaks of evil and sin and what causes a person to act on it.
Arjuna said: O descendant of Vrishni, by what is one impelled to sinful acts, even unwillingly, as if engaged by force?
The Blessed Lord said: It is lust only, Arjuna, which is born of contact with the material modes of passion and later transformed into wrath, and which is the all-devouring, sinful enemy of this world.
- Bhagavad Gita 3:36-37
That's how evil persists in this world.
The five great elements, false ego, intelligence, the unmanifested, the ten senses, the mind, the five sense objects, desire, hatred, happiness, distress, the aggregate, the life symptoms, and convictions-all these are considered, in summary, to be the field of activities and its interactions.
-Bhagavad Gita 13: 6-7
All together they create the interactions between the bodies in this world.
I shall now explain the knowable, knowing which you will taste the eternal. This is beginningless, and it is subordinate to Me. It is called Brahman, the spirit, and it lies beyond the cause and effect of this material world.
Everywhere are His hands and legs, His eyes and faces, and He hears everything. In this way the Supersoul exists.
The Supersoul is the original source of all senses, yet He is without senses. He is unattached, although He is the maintainer of all living beings. He transcends the modes of nature, and at the same time He is the master of all modes of material nature.
The Supreme Truth exists both internally and externally, in the moving and nonmoving. He is beyond the power of the material senses to see or to know. Although far, far away, He is also near to all.
- Bhagavad Gita 13:13-16
5. Why is there death?
That's a silly question though.
Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.
As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. The self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change.
-Bhagavad Gita 2:12-13
Those who are seers of the truth have concluded that of the nonexistent there is no endurance, and of the existent there is no cessation. This seers have concluded by studying the nature of both.
Know that which pervades the entire body is indestructible. No one is able to destroy the imperishable soul.
Only the material body of the indestructible, immeasurable and eternal living entity is subject to destruction; therefore, fight, O descendant of Bharata.
He who thinks that the living entity is the slayer or that he is slain, does not understand. One who is in knowledge knows that the self slays not nor is slain.
For the soul there is never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.
-Bhagavad Gita 2:16-20
There is NO DEATH. only the material body stops working and comes to an end, but the soul is immortal and can be destroyed by no force on earth.
The soul can never be cut into pieces by any weapon, nor can he be burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind.
This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and can be neither burned nor dried. He is everlasting, all-pervading, unchangeable, immovable and eternally the same.
-Bhagavad Gita 2:23-24
For one who has taken his birth, death is certain; and for one who is dead, birth is certain. Therefore, in the unavoidable discharge of your duty, you should not lament.
All created beings are unmanifest in their beginning, manifest in their interim state, and unmanifest again when they are annihilated. So what need is there for lamentation?
-Bhagavad Gita 2:27-28
The natural reaction of birth is death. It's the fundamental law of all physics.
Nothing can be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed into other states.
Death is for the body, the soul is indestructible, not even Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva can destroy it.
So, there you go.
Read it before you put forth your next question.
The New Testament is not in my Bible. I am Jewish. The Tanakh is my Bible, what you call the Old Testament. I am familiar with your New Testament, just it doesn't carry weight with me.
Well thanks for your thought, that is such an extensive conversation, I will respond when I have more time. The context of this messages though is this.
Can you give a brief explanation of your position of gods plan and purpose, so we can discuss it further?
According to the Tanakh of course
God.
Through revelation, manuscripts, your own thoughts, a man?
God has a seven thousand year plan. It started when he asked his council of angels, Let us make man in our image, i.e. humanity with power to choose good and evil. Talmud says the angels unanimously said it was a bad idea, but God does whatever he wants. I believe God created both good and evil, and is above both. He wanted free agents in the divine image like himself. Wisdom in the Proverbs of Solomon means Torah. She was the first of God's creation. God created humanity to receive Torah. Every nation rejected the Torah. Israel was the last nation God offered the Torah, and they accepted it. Many Jews conclude therefore that the universe was made for Israel. The purpose of it all? "Fear God and keep his mitzvot (commandments), for that is your entire duty." Ecclesiastes 12. The mitzvot are explained in the Torah.
God talks to me.
Tell him I said hello.
Sure
They say hello back
"They"? LolThey say hello back
God doesn't micromanage. He set up the general gist and only comes by every once in awhile to tweak things. Otherwise, He wants us to deal with everything we are capable of dealing with.
Yep.
Is it abandonment, or thinking we're adults and can handle things without crying to Daddy all the time?
What is "good"? I think we have a tendency to equate it with "thigns we like", not necessarily an objective reality.
Sure. "Sin" is just out-of-context behaviors and actions that evolved within humanity for survival purposes. This is why it seems so arbitrary. It's not that murder is wrong (after all, you can't even eat or drink without killing SOMETHING), but that there are times when it's needed and most of the time, it simply isn't.
God didn't create us to die or suffer per se. He only created us as limited mortals and we're stuck with the game world God programmed. However, He also gave us brains and so we can oftentimes fix it ourselves.
Depends on the mythology?
Not necessarily, but is it Yahweh? The bible reveals that Yahweh went to the Council of El in a kind of "prequel" story and berated the other gods, including El, for being apathetic towards human plight. Now Yahweh gets the same criticisms. What if the creator is El and you've been worshipping an upstart all this time?
What do manuscripts prove other than the authors knew how to write?
Per Genesis, we were to be the janitors/maintenance crew for the Garden. That's it.
Isn't that idolatry? Do you find God in ink and paper? Do you pray to books? Can books have conversations with you (assuming you are not in some electronic and interactive book)? I mean, I know many people don't feel any kind of spiritual or divine presence. I just think atheists are more honest about it. Theists who have no sense of the divine rely on idolatry out of jealousy for those who do, even though, I guess, it's like a skill present at birth: either you got it or you don't. For those without a "God area" of the brain, no amount of revelation will work because the antenna's broken.
The Song of Solomon is about revealing God, or about some dude and some chick going on and on about how sexy cool they are?
Well, for starters, Satan isn't even IN the story of Adam and Eve.
There are things an individual can fix. There are things locals can fix. There are things nations can fix. And there are things that can only be fixed if all nations worked together. Just start picking problems and work on them.
Then work towards defeating wickedness, but be sure you aren't just calling something wicked because a book told you it was.
Matthew 6:25-34New International Version (NIV)
So you said sin is not the reason a child is born with disabilities so why? Why is a child to be responsible for the parents error according to genetics? You said thats not the reason, so why?
I believe that genetics is the answer. We inherit our parents flaws. It is so basic. What needs to be done is more study on genetics so that it can be proven that we do inherit sin. Just like Paul said.