What Real Evidence Exists for The Resurrection?

[godnotgod]

.... the supposed likenesses are random depositions which our innate pattern-seeking drive links up with images we internalised in infancy.

...and those internalized images from infancy were none other than momma and poppa. But, since momma and poppa go away, we are left alone and afraid in a seemingly hostile universe. This created anxiety. And so, we imagined there might be a big, forever poppa in the sky whom we could go to for comfort, or rather, that he could come to us in a familiar form. Enter Jesus, the true missing link between the temporal and the absolute worlds, our surrogate parent from heaven. Not only did he provide comfort for our pain, confusion, and sorrow, but he took away our terrible sin and guilt.

All we had to do was to kill him as sacrifice so Big Daddy would stop punishing us.

It all sounds so logical, and, in the mind of the child, it is.

 

[Smoke]

Smoke, I respect your opinion, and I also expect you to have reasonable evidence to back up such a claim. On what basis do you claim a consensus of belief among serious modern scholars (by which I take you to mean historians)? And I am not taking the word "consenus" in its literal sense to mean 100% agreement. I would say that the figure should be in the 90th percentile, however, for such a claim to be accurate.

I'm sure it is. I don't think there are more than half a dozen serious, reputable scholars who think Jesus never existed, and I can't -- right off hand -- think of any of them by name. The percentage of scholars who think Jesus actually existed is so overwhelming as to be virtually (though not quite literally) 100%.

I think there are several good reasons for thinking Jesus really existed. For instance:

Paul acknowledged his adversary James as Jesus' brother. I don't think he would have done so if James had not been known to be Jesus' brother.

The baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist makes no sense in the context of Christian belief. Even the authors of the canonical gospels seem bewildered by it. The very awkwardness of the tradition makes it likely to be true.

I think we have in the Ebionites -- a Jewish sect that believed Jesus was the Messiah but did not believe in his divinity or in the Virgin Birth -- a hint of the pre-Christian beliefs of Jesus' actual followers.

Granted, that doesn't tell us a lot. But I think it's enough to be persuasive.

 

[Copernicus]

I'm sure it is. I don't think there are more than half a dozen serious, reputable scholars who think Jesus never existed, and I can't -- right off hand -- think of any of them by name. The percentage of scholars who think Jesus actually existed is so overwhelming as to be virtually (though not quite literally) 100%.

Smoke, you've mentioned two very different groups in the above paragraph:
1) Scholars who think Jesus never existed...
2) Scholars who think Jesus actually existed...
You omit mention of a third possible group"
3) Scholars who have no opinion one way or the other

And you present no data at all to support the claim that a near consensus exists in group 2. Instead, you just repeat what we get from Christians, who sometimes use this argument of a "near consensus" as if it were proof of something instead of a blatant appeal to popularity ("near consensus") and authority ("serious, reputable"). I agree that a majority of historians who have published on the subject appear to believe that Jesus was a real person, but most of these same historians are Christians (at least in upbringing) who take it as an article of faith that he existed.

I think there are several good reasons for thinking Jesus really existed. For instance:

Paul acknowledged his adversary James as Jesus' brother. I don't think he would have done so if James had not been known to be Jesus' brother.

Paul was also the earliest source of information we have on the Jesus cult. I don't consider this brief mention to be very convincing evidence of the historicity of Jesus. It's not as if everyone who proselytized a religion back in those days was telling the literal truth about all of their experiences. The interesting thing about such details of Jesus' life is that they grow more and more elaborate in later documents, suggesting a pattern of embellishment. Paul himself hardly said anything about the life of Jesus. We have no details of a large segment of his childhood, yet you would think that Paul would have had more to say on that subject, having personally met the brother of Jesus. Would he not have had the curiosity to pump James for details?

The baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist makes no sense in the context of Christian belief. Even the authors of the canonical gospels seem bewildered by it. The very awkwardness of the tradition makes it likely to be true.

I don't know why this bizarre report makes the Jesus story sound more plausible to you. It sounds like just another story that was tacked on to the main narrative. If anything, the awkwardness of the tradition makes it sound unlikely to be true. From a Christian perspective, why would a man without sin seek out or need a baptism? What was being cleansed from his soul?

I think we have in the Ebionites -- a Jewish sect that believed Jesus was the Messiah but did not believe in his divinity or in the Virgin Birth -- a hint of the pre-Christian beliefs of Jesus' actual followers.

I don't see how this has a bearing on the historicity of Jesus. According to Elaine Pagels, that may have been the prevalent belief before the elevation of Christian orthodoxy to state religion in the Empire. The Virgin Birth and divinity of Christ would have been very important to Constantine, who wanted a religion that would be worthy of Roman power. How could the central figure not have both those qualities when past emperors had them? Caesar Augustus was also supposedly the product of a Virgin Birth, and emperors were generally considered divine.

Granted, that doesn't tell us a lot. But I think it's enough to be persuasive.

You seem to acknowledge how little this tells us, and you do not mention any of the points made by critics of Jesus' historicity. For me, the best summary of the state of this debate over historicity comes from Jesus - History or Myth? Historian David H. Lewis, an advocate for non-historicity, summed up the only viable positions as these three:

(1) Jesus did exist as the gospels tell us
(2) he didn’t exist
(3) he did exist but is now essentially almost unrecognizable and may be unrecoverable.

All but Christian scholars reject (1). Most scholars (of indeterminate number) reject (2), as did his opponent in the debate, William Loader. At best, one might argue for a kind of shadowy itinerant "proto-Jesus" who spawned the Christian narrative that we have today. But evidence for that position is extremely scant.

BTW, Smoke, thanks for taking the time to answer me. We disagree on this particular issue, but it is an interesting one to ponder.

 

[footprints]

Well, my friend, you are just as capable as any of us, so I pass the homework assignment back to you. I was more interested in why Smoke believes the claim that a near consensus of scholars believes in the historical Jesus. I can easily imagine why you would believe such a thing, but I consider Smoke more objective about the question of the historicity of Jesus. Personally, I have never come across any data to support that claim, and I have looked for it.

What you can easily imagine pertaining to Dunemeister, I am sure you can just as easily imagine of yourself, and why you have never come across any data to support that claim even though you have looked for it.

 

[Copernicus]

What you can easily imagine pertaining to Dunemeister, I am sure you can just as easily imagine of yourself, and why you have never come across any data to support that claim even though you have looked for it.

Perhaps because there is not data to back up such a claim? That possibility may not have occurred to you, but it has occurred to me. When people talk about a "near consensus", they are engaging in unfounded hyperbole.

 

[godnotgod]

Well, the resurrection does do something. Through it, God pours out his spirit into his people (those who are and will be). But you asked me what it symbolizes, not what it does.

We do know that solar and vegetative renewal myths were already in place before Jesus entered the scene, and that the ancient world was already saturated with resurrection myths of other god-men, but where does the idea of the resurrection being a symbol of cosmic renewal originate?

I know of nothing to indicate that the resurrection does any such thing. If the Resurrection were designed to "pour out God's spirit into his people", why did Jesus only reveal this miracle to the Roman guards outside his tomb? No one else witnessed the actual Resurrection. Where is there any such "pouring out" of anything? In fact, the fact that he did not reveal the Resurrection to anyone defeats the argument that he did it to prove who he was. If that were his rationale, he would have resurrected himself to as many as possible. At best, he may have survived the Crucifixion and walked amongst his followers once more for a short time, perhaps then being spirited away to Kashmir where he was nursed back to health by the good Buddhist monks. This would adequately explain the empty tomb.

It is the Crucifixion that is the active 'pouring' agent:

Matthew 26:28

This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

I don't buy the "fact/matter of faith" distinction...

This has always been the problem with Christian doctrine. You fail to understand the difference between fantasy and reality, treating belief as if it were Absolute Truth:

"Christian dogma combines a mythological story which is for the most part Hebrew, and a group of metaphysical "concepts" which are Greek, and then proceeds to treat both as statements of fact(!)--as information about objective realities inhabiting (a) the world of history, and (b) the "supernatural" world existing parallel to the historical, but on a higher plane. In other words, it talks about mythology and metaphysic in the language of science.(!) The resulting confusion has been so vast, and has so muddled Western thought, that all our current terms, our very language, so partake of the confusion that they can hardly straighten it out."

Alan Watts, 'Myth and Ritual in Christianity'

 

[godnotgod]

All that really says is the roshi is not really enlightened.

Where does it say that?

And I suppose one of the reasons the monks lead the attacks on the chinese forces.

What on earth are you talking about?

One cannot blame the students for poor quality teaching.

I suppose you could teach them how to become enlightened, being enlightened yourself, eh?

 

[godnotgod]

They Should Have Noticed

John E. Remsburg, in his classic book The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidence of His Existence (The Truth Seeker Company, NY, no date, pp. 24-25), lists the following writers who lived during the time, or within a century after the time, that Jesus is supposed to have lived:

Josephus
Philo-Judæus
Seneca
Pliny Elder
Arrian
Petronius
Dion Pruseus
Paterculus
Suetonius
Juvenal
Martial
Persius
Plutarch
Pliny Younger
Tacitus
Justus of Tiberius
Apollonius
Quintilian
Lucanus
Epictetus
Hermogones Silius Italicus
Statius
Ptolemy
Appian
Phlegon
Phædrus
Valerius Maximus
Lucian
Pausanias
Florus Lucius
Quintius Curtius
Aulus Gellius
Dio Chrysostom
Columella
Valerius Flaccus
Damis
Favorinus
Lysias
Pomponius Mela
Appion of Alexandria
Theon of Smyrna

According to Remsburg, "Enough of the writings of the authors named in the foregoing list remains to form a library. Yet in this mass of Jewish and Pagan literature, aside from two forged passages in the works of a Jewish author, and two disputed passages in the works of Roman writers, there is to be found no mention of Jesus Christ." Nor, we may add, do any of these authors make note of the Disciples or Apostles - increasing the embarrassment from the silence of history concerning the foundation of Christianity.

 

[Dunemeister]

We do know that solar and vegetative renewal myths were already in place before Jesus entered the scene, and that the ancient world was already saturated with resurrection myths of other god-men, but where does the idea of the resurrection being a symbol of cosmic renewal originate?

Jewish apocalyptic.

I know of nothing to indicate that the resurrection does any such thing. If the Resurrection were designed to "pour out God's spirit into his people", why did Jesus only reveal this miracle to the Roman guards outside his tomb? No one else witnessed the actual Resurrection. Where is there any such "pouring out" of anything? In fact, the fact that he did not reveal the Resurrection to anyone defeats the argument that he did it to prove who he was. If that were his rationale, he would have resurrected himself to as many as possible. At best, he may have survived the Crucifixion and walked amongst his followers once more for a short time, perhaps then being spirited away to Kashmir where he was nursed back to health by the good Buddhist monks. This would adequately explain the empty tomb.

Well, it does what it does not by virtue of people SEEING it but by virtue of it HAPPENING. What's the problem?

And if Jesus were nursed back to health, he could never have gotten the reputation of being resurrected, the Lord of Life, the means of the cosmos' renewal. If that had been the case, his messianic claim would have simply ended and he would have been forgotten along with all the other messianic pretenders.

It is the Crucifixion that is the active 'pouring' agent:

Matthew 26:28

This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

Ahhh, the citation of a single text wins the debate, eh? Niiiiiice.

This has always been the problem with Christian doctrine. You fail to understand the difference between fantasy and reality, treating belief as if it were Absolute Truth:

"Christian dogma combines a mythological story which is for the most part Hebrew, and a group of metaphysical "concepts" which are Greek, and then proceeds to treat both as statements of fact(!)--as information about objective realities inhabiting (a) the world of history, and (b) the "supernatural" world existing parallel to the historical, but on a higher plane. In other words, it talks about mythology and metaphysic in the language of science.(!) The resulting confusion has been so vast, and has so muddled Western thought, that all our current terms, our very language, so partake of the confusion that they can hardly straighten it out."

Alan Watts, 'Myth and Ritual in Christianity'

that's right. We're all just so......stupid.

 

[Dunemeister]

They Should Have Noticed

John E. Remsburg, in his classic book The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidence of His Existence (The Truth Seeker Company, NY, no date, pp. 24-25), lists the following writers who lived during the time, or within a century after the time, that Jesus is supposed to have lived:

Josephus
Philo-Judæus
Seneca
Pliny Elder
Arrian
Petronius
Dion Pruseus
Paterculus
Suetonius
Juvenal
Martial
Persius
Plutarch
Pliny Younger
Tacitus
Justus of Tiberius
Apollonius
Quintilian
Lucanus
Epictetus
Hermogones Silius Italicus
Statius
Ptolemy
Appian
Phlegon
Phædrus
Valerius Maximus
Lucian
Pausanias
Florus Lucius
Quintius Curtius
Aulus Gellius
Dio Chrysostom
Columella
Valerius Flaccus
Damis
Favorinus
Lysias
Pomponius Mela
Appion of Alexandria
Theon of Smyrna

According to Remsburg, "Enough of the writings of the authors named in the foregoing list remains to form a library. Yet in this mass of Jewish and Pagan literature, aside from two forged passages in the works of a Jewish author, and two disputed passages in the works of Roman writers, there is to be found no mention of Jesus Christ." Nor, we may add, do any of these authors make note of the Disciples or Apostles - increasing the embarrassment from the silence of history concerning the foundation of Christianity.

Yawn.

 

[godnotgod]

Yawn.

Go ahead... indulge your Security Center...Ignorance is sleepy bliss...that is...until...heh...heh

 

[godnotgod]

that's right. We're all just so......stupid.

No. Stupid people are incapable of the cunningly fabricated facade of self-deception which the Christian has produced.

Carnie barkers and charlatans are NOT stupid people!

 

[godnotgod]

Jewish apocalyptic.

...which is merely another prophetic interpretation of an alleged event. Shall we pull out our crystal balls and tarot cards now?

 

[godnotgod]

Well, it does what it does not by virtue of people SEEING it but by virtue of it HAPPENING. What's the problem?

Well, duh! How do we know it happened since no one saw it?

And if Jesus were nursed back to health, he could never have gotten the reputation of being resurrected, the Lord of Life, the means of the cosmos' renewal. If that had been the case, his messianic claim would have simply ended and he would have been forgotten along with all the other messianic pretenders.

....which brings us back to the fact that you actually have no real faith. The Resurrection is merely a psychological device, a trick, devised to make the believer believe. Actually, it is'nt even THAT! It is a kind of hypnotic trance. What a shabby joke!:biglaugh: If Christians were truly spiritually inclined, they would recognize the spiritual truth when they saw it, rather than demand cheap theatrics in order to be convinced. But that is the sad fact: they are not spiritual at all, but religiously indoctrinated with the narcotic of dogma. The former frees the mind; the latter enslaves it.

Belief clings...

Faith lets go.

Ahhh, the citation of a single text wins the debate, eh? Niiiiiice.

I was not aware that this was a matter of winning or losing. Is that what you are attempting to do? Poor fellow!

The Resurrection was not an 'outpouring' of anything, as you claim. The nourishing of man via of God's spirit is symbolized by the Last Supper, in which Jesus tells his disciples to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood "which shall be shed unto many for the remission of sin". It was the Crucifixion which was the vehicle for the shedding of blood, not the Resurrection.

The Resurrection means nothing beyond "proof" that Jesus was divine by his overcoming of death. Unfortunately, it does not even accomplish THAT, as nothing was proven to anyone, since no one witnessed the event. Meanwhile, Jesus was spirited away back to his Buddhist friends, who were responsible for having raised him from the get go anyway.

Come! Let us wander down the Poppycock Path together, but make sure you have your Rose Colored Glasses in place! Why, we might even catch a glimpse of the lovely Invisible Pink Unicorn!:biglaugh:

 

[Dunemeister]

...which is merely another prophetic interpretation of an alleged event. Shall we pull out our crystal balls and tarot cards now?

"Merely another prophetic interpretation." You just dump dollops of ignorance onto your literary incompetence, don't you?

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

godnotgood
Christians were truly spiritually inclined, they would recognize the spiritual truth when they saw it, rather than demand cheap theatrics in order to be convinced. But that is the sad fact: they are not spiritual at all, but religiously indoctrinated with the narcotic of dogma. The former frees the mind; the latter enslaves it.

Belief clings...

Faith lets go.

Dogma enslaves the mind? Belief clings? Faith lets ago? Maybe if your "faith" is nihilism. If you have absolutely no sense of what it is you are trusting in, how can the act of trust even take place?

Dogma actually frees the mind to think, because it gives it a place to start thinking, a ground to stand on.

Dogma is not just a "belief" to assent to, its a road to travel down. If a man comes to a cross in the roads and is told to cross all of them at once, he's liable to end up just sitting in the dust. Or, if he is told there are no roads at all, he'll just wander aimless, ending up nowhere because he was never heading somewhere in the first place.

Christian faith is fides quaerens intellectum ; faith seeking understanding.

It seems to me like you are thinking up a religion that is opposed to thought. You don't want to free the mind, you want to abandon it.

 

[Thought Criminal]

Dogma enslaves the mind? Belief clings? Faith lets ago? Maybe if your "faith" is nihilism. If you have absolutely no sense of what it is you are trusting in, how can the act of trust even take place?

Dogma actually frees the mind to think, because it gives it a place to start thinking, a ground to stand on.

Dogma is not just a "belief" to assent to, its a road to travel down. If a man comes to a cross in the roads and is told to cross all of them at once, he's liable to end up just sitting in the dust. Or, if he is told there are no roads at all, he'll just wander aimless, ending up nowhere because he was never heading somewhere in the first place.

Christian faith is fides quaerens intellectum ; faith seeking understanding.

It seems to me like you are thinking up a religion that is opposed to thought. You don't want to free the mind, you want to abandon it.

Understanding or truth?

TC

 

[godnotgod]

Dogma enslaves the mind? Belief clings? Faith lets ago? Maybe if your "faith" is nihilism. If you have absolutely no sense of what it is you are trusting in, how can the act of trust even take place?

Faith you already have. Just the fact that you are alive means you have faith. Faith lets go because there is trust. It understands.

When you let go, you will float. When you cling, when you grasp, you will sink.

Dogma actually frees the mind to think, because it gives it a place to start thinking, a ground to stand on.

Thinking is incompatible with a free mind. A free mind is one which sees, directly and without thought, what reality actually is, exactly as it is.

Where there is thought, there is belief and doctrine, which creates a position (ground) one must undertake. Once a position is undertaken, one must contend. Contention leads to defense, which leads to offense. Defense and offense only lead to conflict and the divisive mind, which sees reality in dual terms, which it never is. Dogma is the hardening of belief into a rigid, untenable code firmly held as Absolute Truth. It is the absolute polarization of one's position, based upon belief. Belief is not reality, but merely a model of what reality is supposed to be.

Dogma is not just a "belief" to assent to, its a road to travel down. If a man comes to a cross in the roads and is told to cross all of them at once, he's liable to end up just sitting in the dust. Or, if he is told there are no roads at all, he'll just wander aimless, ending up nowhere because he was never heading somewhere in the first place.

If you see a fork in the road, take it!

Christian faith is fides quaerens intellectum ; faith seeking understanding.

Hardly! More like the fear-driven mind seeking freedom from anxiety. Where it lands on is dogma, not on understanding. True understanding occurs when one finally sees reality just the way it is. Dogma closes the door to understanding because it creates a rigid formula that is seen in place of reality. What you call thinking is not thinking at all, but blind acceptance of pre-formulated dogma, designed to pacify anxiety. It is Pablum.

It seems to me like you are thinking up a religion that is opposed to thought. You don't want to free the mind, you want to abandon it.

Religion, by its very nature, is the product of thought. Belief and dogma are its by products.

The spiritual experience, on the other hand, is never about thought, belief, doctrine or dogma. It is completely free of these. It is the seeing into the very heart of the Infinite itself. It is for this very reason that Jesus told his audience that they were mistaken to think they would find eternal life within the scriptures.

I am not saying, however, that religion is not useful. However, it is only the vehicle to take us to a particular dropping off point. After that, we leave it behind as we would leave a boat behind which carries us from one shore to the other. There are some, however, who, during the voyage, become mesmerized by the structure of the boat, and fail to disembark upon reaching the other shore. They continue to cling to the vessel of religion, rather than to take the necessary leap of faith into the mystery before them.

It is easy to become confused between the menu and the meal itself.

The thinking mind cannot fathom the mind of the Infinite, no matter how hard it tries. That is why it must be abandoned. Once abandoned, we gain union with the mind of the Infinite, which allows us to live in true reality. Since we must continue to live in the ordinary world of the thinking mind, however, we still must use it, but now from a universal perspective, rather than from a position of contention. We no longer think of right and wrong, good and bad, etc, as being in conflict, but rather, as being complimentary to each other. We now see the reality of the whole, instead of having our view confined only to one side.

"Do not seek the truth; only cease to cherish opinion"
Sixth Zen Patriarch

 

[godnotgod]

"Merely another prophetic interpretation." You just dump dollops of ignorance onto your literary incompetence, don't you?

Here are a few more dollops, just for good measure:

Apparently, this "transformed cosmos" you speak of is still based upon a monarchical, hierarchical social system, the same old system which perpetuates our human misery, only projected into some imaginary future and embellished with fantasy. It is, essentially, an artificial state of affairs, where the impulses of nature are held completely at bay. It is summed up in Isa.11:6-9:

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
and the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall feed;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put his hand
on the adder's den.
They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Yahweh
as the waters cover the sea.

This is a naive, ignorant view of nature and the spiritual world. It is asking nature to cease its natural impulses; for creatures to cease being what they naturally are.

One Christian author describes this transformed cosmos as follows:

"This transformed state of things is so dramatic, it is like a new or second creation. A "new heavens and new earth," Isaiah terms it (Isa. 65:17-25, 66:22-24). It is inaugurated by a highly idealized Davidic King (Isa. 11:1-5; Mic. 5:2-4).[7] Total peace reigns among all nations (Isa. 2:4; Mic. 4:3). "

http://www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/jdtabor/future.html

Unfortunately, at the very core of this new cosmos is a system which plants the seeds of suffering; that of nationhood. As long as there is hierarchy, monarchy, and nationhood, there will be the idea of "yours and mine", "lesser and greater", "self and other". The Judaic vision of the cosmos is one which superimposes an artificial system of moral restraints over the natural world, except in this case, the restraints are absolute.

Why not simply plant chips in everyone's brains, including those of the animals, as an ultimate means of control?

Now, there really is such a condition as a transformed cosmos, but it is not the artificial Judaic description. A true transformation does occur, but it occurs not in some imaginary future, but in the here and now, and in the mind of man. The world is still the same, but we now see it with opened eyes. What we previously thought we understood was reality, is no more, as our new vision shows us the world before us exactly the way it is, rather than the distorted view our belief systems told us it was.

We call this new vision Enlightenment. Actually, it is not new. It was there all along, but we simply failed to realize it.

 

[Dunemeister]

Here are a few more dollops, just for good measure:

Apparently, this "transformed cosmos" you speak of is still based upon a monarchical, hierarchical social system, the same old system which perpetuates our human misery, only projected into some imaginary future and embellished with fantasy. It is, essentially, an artificial state of affairs, where the impulses of nature are held completely at bay. It is summed up in Isa.11:6-9:

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
and the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall feed;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put his hand
on the adder's den.
They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Yahweh
as the waters cover the sea.

This is a naive, ignorant view of nature and the spiritual world. It is asking nature to cease its natural impulses; for creatures to cease being what they naturally are.

One Christian author describes this transformed cosmos as follows:

"This transformed state of things is so dramatic, it is like a new or second creation. A "new heavens and new earth," Isaiah terms it (Isa. 65:17-25, 66:22-24). It is inaugurated by a highly idealized Davidic King (Isa. 11:1-5; Mic. 5:2-4).[7] Total peace reigns among all nations (Isa. 2:4; Mic. 4:3). "

What the Bible Says About Death, Afterlife, and the Future

Unfortunately, at the very core of this new cosmos is a system which plants the seeds of suffering; that of nationhood. As long as there is hierarchy, monarchy, and nationhood, there will be the idea of "yours and mine", "lesser and greater", "self and other". The Judaic vision of the cosmos is one which superimposes an artificial system of moral restraints over the natural world, except in this case, the restraints are absolute.

Why not simply plant chips in everyone's brains, including those of the animals, as an ultimate means of control?

Now, there really is such a condition as a transformed cosmos, but it is not the artificial Judaic description. A true transformation does occur, but it occurs not in some imaginary future, but in the here and now, and in the mind of man. The world is still the same, but we now see it with opened eyes. What we previously thought we understood was reality, is no more, as our new vision shows us the world before us exactly the way it is, rather than the distorted view our belief systems told us it was.

We call this new vision Enlightenment. Actually, it is not new. It was there all along, but we simply failed to realize it.

You just keep confirming my suspicion that you really don't understand the texts your dealing with and worse, you don't even really care.