Was Jesus a Rationalist Who Tried Largely Unsuccessfully to Use Metaphor to Free the People of His Time from Dogma?

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Was Jesus a Rationalist Who Tried Largely Unsuccessfully to Use Metaphor to Free the People of His Time from Dogma?

People who believe that Jesus himself was a myth tend to base their argument on two things :

1. The unbelievable nature of the only written records we have of his life with their supernatural trappings and inconsistencies.

2. The absence of any references to him in contemporary histories.

But why should the life of an itinerant preacher who spent most of his time in the sticks, caused some minor disruption in a temple in Jerusalem and said some impolite things to some rabbis and was then crucified (something which happened to an awful not of troublemakers at that time) make it into the history books? The only reason we would expect to find him there is if he actually was a miracle worker who went around raising the dead and walking on water. That would be news. But we don't believe that. Clearly those stories were the product of the mythologising process when stories are passed on orally by individuals who want to convince their audience of how wonderful this individual seemed to be. Someone says, "We only had water to drink at the wedding, but Jesus was such a great guy to hang around with that we might have been drinking wine." A guy says, "Jesus brought me out of that depression. I came alive again. Before that I was a dead man." It isn't hard to imagine how the myths began. And by the time the stories were being written down the authors had a vested interest in persuading their audience so they told some deliberate lies, for instance two of the gospel authors made up stories to place Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, to link up with an Old Testament prophecy, when his birth place was almost certainly Nazareth.

The real question, if he did exist as an individual, is why one of many itinerant preachers became so mythologised. If he didn't perform the magic tricks he was reputed to have performed, what was it which excited those with whom he came in contact? The answer, I think, lies in his words. We have to allow for the fact that he was talking in parables and metaphors and using other forms of poetic language, but he was talking about the deep psychological sickness of the human race and offering a cure. Religion was a symptom of that historic sickness which had its origins long before the dawn of civilisation. Jesus was born into the Jewish religion, which believes that there is a supernatural being which stands in judgement of all humans. It seems to me that Jesus, like a good psychiatrist, engaged with his patients, using their delusion as the path out of that delusion. If nature and love between humans were what they knew of their God, then he emphasised those things, and used them as an argument against the concept that there was a supernatural God who might condemn them. Nature didn't condemn them. The sun shines on the evil as well as the good. And they needn't condemn each other. Such judgement and lack of forgiveness were the main source of their suffering. What he called "sin" is what we would call "neurosis", it is and was the natural self-interest of the suffering individual. He must have been very good at relieving that suffering in many of those with whom he came in contact. This must have seemed miraculous. But how to explain the miracle without acknowledging that the whole of the human race is suffering from a psychological sickness? Well, if we are all healthy then he must have been superhuman. The idea that he was simply a healthy human being and we are all psychological cripples just wasn't very appealing. Hence the miracles and the belief that he was divine. And various other biases would have come into play. Because many of us are afraid of sex he had to become sexless, even though the sexually repressive philosophy promoted in the laws of the Old Testament and in the writings of Jesus' main cheerleader Paul are not to be found in the words attributed to him. His comment about men who look lustfully at women committing adultery with them in their hearts can be seen more as a plea for honesty and against hypocrisy, i.e. why punish people for doing what we all want to do anyway?

Recently I've started writing a series of essays in which I, as a person who doesn't believe in the supernatural, give my own interpretations for some of the things Jesus is quoted as saying. For me it doesn't really matter whether or not he existed. What matters for me is the inspiration I get from the words. I could be writing a commentary on a fictional novel, or an ink blot for that matter. If something helps me to excavate something of value from myself, then it has value for me regardless of its source. My approach is nothing new. I'm just following the example of one of my heroes, Wilhelm Reich, who put forward much the same kinds of ideas in his 1953 book The Murder of Christ : The Emotional Plague of Mankind.

http://www.howtobefree-theblog.blogspot.com.au/


"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


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Quote:Yes, I am in "faith

Quote:
Yes, I am in "faith mode", but it is not faith in the scriptures. It is faith only in my own intuition.

And there in lies the problem with humans. It simply amounts to "if it feels good go with it". Yet you rightfully reject that "intuition" of others.

If you really want to believe that mental ink blot is a butterfly you will, but it is still a delusion and a cop out with the excuse of "intuition".

Again see if you can spot the pattern.

"My intuition tells me that Allah is real"

"My intuition tells me that Yahweh is real"

"My intutition tells me that Vishnu is real"

"My intutition tells me that Angelina Jolie is in love with me"

 

What is that you say, those things don't make sense? But when you do it it is perfectly sane? Can I have what you are smoking so I can see that butterfly too?

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog


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Something happened

Aussiescribbler wrote:

Old Seer wrote:

The world is in a box that nothing "is" until one in authority says so.

This intellectual tendency was brilliantly sent up in George Bernard Shaw's The Black Girl in Search of God. It's ages since I read it so I can't remember the details but the scientist character in it is just such a guy.

Somewhat inspired by Shaw, I later wrote a fable of my own using some similar gags. It was a response to the frustration I was feeling arguing with both Christians and atheists at the time of the release of The Passion of the Christ. It's called The Two Shaky Towers and is a satire on the twin follies of overly mechanistic science and mystical religion. If you are interested you can download a free ebook copy from here.

To my post on this- I don't know how it got where it is.   Smiling

The only possible thing the world needs saving from are those running it.

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There's no such word in the book

Aussiescribbler wrote:

People who believe that Jesus himself was a myth tend to base their argument on two things :

1. The unbelievable nature of the only written records we have of his life with their supernatural trappings and inconsistencies.

2. The absence of any references to him in contemporary histories.

But why should the life of an itinerant preacher who spent most of his time in the sticks, caused some minor disruption in a temple in Jerusalem and said some impolite things to some rabbis and was then crucified (something which happened to an awful not of troublemakers at that time) make it into the history books? The only reason we would expect to find him there is if he actually was a miracle worker who went around raising the dead and walking on water. That would be news. But we don't believe that. Clearly those stories were the product of the mythologising process when stories are passed on orally by individuals who want to convince their audience of how wonderful this individual seemed to be. Someone says, "We only had water to drink at the wedding, but Jesus was such a great guy to hang around with that we might have been drinking wine." A guy says, "Jesus brought me out of that depression. I came alive again. Before that I was a dead man." It isn't hard to imagine how the myths began. And by the time the stories were being written down the authors had a vested interest in persuading their audience so they told some deliberate lies, for instance two of the gospel authors made up stories to place Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, to link up with an Old Testament prophecy, when his birth place was almost certainly Nazareth.

The real question, if he did exist as an individual, is why one of many itinerant preachers became so mythologised. If he didn't perform the magic tricks he was reputed to have performed, what was it which excited those with whom he came in contact? The answer, I think, lies in his words. We have to allow for the fact that he was talking in parables and metaphors and using other forms of poetic language, but he was talking about the deep psychological sickness of the human race and offering a cure. Religion was a symptom of that historic sickness which had its origins long before the dawn of civilisation. Jesus was born into the Jewish religion, which believes that there is a supernatural being which stands in judgement of all humans. It seems to me that Jesus, like a good psychiatrist, engaged with his patients, using their delusion as the path out of that delusion. If nature and love between humans were what they knew of their God, then he emphasised those things, and used them as an argument against the concept that there was a supernatural God who might condemn them. Nature didn't condemn them. The sun shines on the evil as well as the good. And they needn't condemn each other. Such judgement and lack of forgiveness were the main source of their suffering. What he called "sin" is what we would call "neurosis", it is and was the natural self-interest of the suffering individual. He must have been very good at relieving that suffering in many of those with whom he came in contact. This must have seemed miraculous. But how to explain the miracle without acknowledging that the whole of the human race is suffering from a psychological sickness? Well, if we are all healthy then he must have been superhuman. The idea that he was simply a healthy human being and we are all psychological cripples just wasn't very appealing. Hence the miracles and the belief that he was divine. And various other biases would have come into play. Because many of us are afraid of sex he had to become sexless, even though the sexually repressive philosophy promoted in the laws of the Old Testament and in the writings of Jesus' main cheerleader Paul are not to be found in the words attributed to him. His comment about men who look lustfully at women committing adultery with them in their hearts can be seen more as a plea for honesty and against hypocrisy, i.e. why punish people for doing what we all want to do anyway?

Recently I've started writing a series of essays in which I, as a person who doesn't believe in the supernatural, give my own interpretations for some of the things Jesus is quoted as saying. For me it doesn't really matter whether or not he existed. What matters for me is the inspiration I get from the words. I could be writing a commentary on a fictional novel, or an ink blot for that matter. If something helps me to excavate something of value from myself, then it has value for me regardless of its source. My approach is nothing new. I'm just following the example of one of my heroes, Wilhelm Reich, who put forward much the same kinds of ideas in his 1953 book The Murder of Christ : The Emotional Plague of Mankind.

http://www.howtobefree-theblog.blogspot.com.au/

That we know of as "supernatural". Such an idea is contrary to biology and physics. It,s a European apllication derived from the fact they don't understand the book or JC. So far as today JC is an unknown mainly because he has a differnent mental direction. To understand the book one needs to look at it from a spiritual point of view. From that perspective it's a completly different story. The Euro and middle eastern mentalities aren't compatible but to only a minor degree. Being you are somewhat, or more-so gravitate toward the spiritual (it seems) you may see a a difference from one persperctive as compared to the other. I can see where your coming from, so on many things you line up with us.   Smiling

The only possible thing the world needs saving from are those running it.

https://sites.google.com/site/oldseers

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Lies are nothing more then falsehoods searching for the truth


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That's eggzackly

Was Jesus a Rationalist Who Tried Largely Unsuccessfully to Use Metaphor to Free the People of His Time from Dogma?_End Quote  what our interpretation is about, and from that understanding we can plainly see that's what the mission of the book is, and leads to. But---the worlds mental direction is opposite and to get another to see it is quite a chore. The book is going East and everyone is going West and can't get the ship turned around.  The trick is to get people to see what the rudder is for.  Any time someone who sees the rudder and says, hey floks this is the rudder over here, he gets persecuted and keel hauled so the captain can't be shown to be the problem because he doesn't want to be rated a fool. JC is the Captain of another ship so the "authorities" keep their ship in a perpetual fog so the people can't see the other, and threw the compass overboard mellenium ago so they themselves can't be questioned. That way they're always right. When the ship hits a rock it's the people's fault for not being able to see through the fog and one guy is picked for the dupe or fall guy and all go back the their quarters thinking justice has been served. But they're still going West. The guy on the sextant is allowed to only speak to the Captain, so when he says to the captain---say there sir, we're in the wrong place. the captain says ---Hmmmmm-OK, go back to your post and I'll think about this (for another 500 years) to see what can be done.  Smiling  

 

The only possible thing the world needs saving from are those running it.

https://sites.google.com/site/oldseers

Knowledge trumps faith and I'm not a Theist

Lies are nothing more then falsehoods searching for the truth


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RobbyPants wrote:Brian37

RobbyPants wrote:

Brian37 wrote:
Your views, so? All you are saying is that Jesus said some pretty stuff you like. SO WHAT.

You cherry pick the bible which is full of nasty stories, even if "metaphor" which is a cop out because you water them down to be  metaphor and take the pretty stories and focus on those. EVERYONE DOES THAT.

I'm curious if anyone has published a book where they do the opposite. Take all the terrible stories, assume they're true, and use that as the basis for which portions you cherry pick, leaving all the "nice" stories of love and compassion as metaphor.

I mean, really, that approach is equally valid as the opposite; it just leaves the terrible nature of god much more obviously apparent. I think that's what I'm going to do the next time someone tells me which parts are true and which are metaphors. I'll just correct them and tell them they have it exactly backward.

The believer has no choice but to ignore the nasty shit. Again in our modern civil society that watering down is in spite of Christianity, not because of it. The Age of Reason and Enlightenment opened the door to that. But it did not make the delusion go away, it only managed to put a secular leash on it.

There was a much more dogmatic and litteral interpretation of the bible back when it was first written, than their is in our modern secular world. I think the abortion doctor murders and 9/11 hijackers adhear much more closely the words in their holy books than moderates or liberals.

There is no way around the fact that civility flies out the window when it comes to religion. Once you buy the "chosen people" bullshit, it becomes quite easy to manipulate others and harm others. Even Stalin's communism instead of a god, made the "worker" the center of the universe through the same appeal to authority that these Abrahamic gods demand of their supporters.

Liberals and moderates don't help humanity in coddling the insecurities of the wingnuts.

But even beyond all this, the other twisted logic is the lack of efficiancy by this alleged all powerful god to use falible humans to write the book and them blames them for what he could have done himself.

 

If this alleged god ran a bicycle factory and wrote the instruction manual for assembly you'd end up with squid as spokes and a grilled cheese sandwitch for a seat. Then the co worker would murder you for using squid and not octopus.

The books of Abraham are an awsome manifesto for both dictators and mafia bosses and rely on the same sale of credulity and fear and appeal to authority. They are merely comic book versions of our real evolutionary and dark side of humanity's desire to be the alpha male. Hopefully, while this harsh reality wont go away, hopefully the more people can or do face this reality the more strength a secular leash can cap any attempt at a fascist state.

I don't think any of our human invented superstitions will ever be wiped out, espeically not by force because no one likes a bully. But I do everything I can on a daily basis to shoot holes in all these superstitions. At a minimum it reminds people that they are not the center of the universe on a planet of 7 billion.

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog


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iwbiek wrote:brian, i really

iwbiek wrote:

brian, i really think you're not getting what he's saying, and i'm starting to think it's deliberate.

it seems to me (to ME, mind you) he started this thread to lay out his beliefs and open them up to comments.  you call them hogwash.  fair enough, but it seems to me you don't call them hogwash on their own merits.  you continue parroting that holy books and imaginary beings are not "necessary," and he continues telling you he never said they were.  he seems to be saying that at least tentatively accepting some portions of holy books and some sort of benevolent being has been helpful to him, and him alone.  if you want to try telling him those things can't possibly be helpful to him, fine.  that would seem to address his arguments on their own merits.  anything else would be your interpolation.

on the whole, i have to say you seem to have rote arguments that you pull out at every opportunity, and a situation like this, where those arguments are not entirely relevant, only serves to underscore that.  i honestly think you don't hear people sometimes.  i also have to say, as someone who studied religion in a purely secular, academic setting, that your cavalier way of lumping together all religions--christianity, islam, judaism, buddhism, ancient pagan religions, etc.--as if they were all one mass of interchangeable fairy tales is troubling.  often, statements you make about religions i specialize in--for example, buddhism--are just plain ignorant, and i think that comes from an attitude that one only needs one set of arguments against any and all religions, because all of them are basically the same sort of nonsense.

truthfully, i think you should take a crash course in world religions for awhile.  i can even recommend some books, if you'd like.

NO I DO NOT need a crash course in world religion. Saying that there are good in all of them is a no brainer. Where we dissagree is what causes that goodness. Evolution, not the damned superstition, causes it, otherwise if goodness were exclusive to one religion we would not find  it elsewhere. I keep telling him to read Victor Stenger's "New Atheism" which takes on all the major three pluss the polytheism and oriental traditions.

And again "he is saying he gets something out of it". Yea and my point is so what? That does not make it nessesarry to live life. Evolution was around long before he was born and there were people even before written tradition that got their jollies off other superstitions. And in the future his favorite comic book will continue to be reviesed or even scrapped in the future for another superstition someone else will get their jollies off of.

And he is also not the first to pull this backdoor tactic pretending to be rational. Once you say "my book this" you are locked into that book. If you are going to defend it then defend it, but don't be half assed about it and pretend you don't find it credible when you do. Something about that book stands out to him, so what. Something always draws a club member into their respective club. But evolution has never been label dependent to occur.

He is not going to have it both ways in this debate. He is not going to move the goal posts and pretend that is not what he is doing.

Buddism nor Janism nor Shintoism or Toism or any religious ism like Christianity or Islam or Hinduism is required to have sex and make a baby. No religion is required. Religion is nothing more than a social club, a comic book club at that. 

Our political and religious constructs as a species do not constitute nessesity for evolution to occur. We can scrap something for something else or reinvent what we claim and it still amounts to making babies.

And as I have said consistantly, you can find pleasent memes in non religious texts in both fiction and biogrophies. The only reason religion exists isn't because it is nessesarry, but because people think they need it. We now live without the polythistic gods of Egypt or Rome, and if we scrap Jesus or Buddism as a species are private parts will still function and we would still make babies. 

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog


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Brian37 wrote:What is that

Brian37 wrote:
What is that you say, those things don't make sense? But when you do it it is perfectly sane? Can I have what you are smoking so I can see that butterfly too?

If I could give it to you I would.

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


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Old Seer wrote:Was Jesus a

Old Seer wrote:

Was Jesus a Rationalist Who Tried Largely Unsuccessfully to Use Metaphor to Free the People of His Time from Dogma?_End Quote  what our interpretation is about, and from that understanding we can plainly see that's what the mission of the book is, and leads to. But---the worlds mental direction is opposite and to get another to see it is quite a chore. The book is going East and everyone is going West and can't get the ship turned around.  The trick is to get people to see what the rudder is for.  Any time someone who sees the rudder and says, hey floks this is the rudder over here, he gets persecuted and keel hauled so the captain can't be shown to be the problem because he doesn't want to be rated a fool. JC is the Captain of another ship so the "authorities" keep their ship in a perpetual fog so the people can't see the other, and threw the compass overboard mellenium ago so they themselves can't be questioned. That way they're always right. When the ship hits a rock it's the people's fault for not being able to see through the fog and one guy is picked for the dupe or fall guy and all go back the their quarters thinking justice has been served. But they're still going West. The guy on the sextant is allowed to only speak to the Captain, so when he says to the captain---say there sir, we're in the wrong place. the captain says ---Hmmmmm-OK, go back to your post and I'll think about this (for another 500 years) to see what can be done.  Smiling  
 A very good analogy. And I believe the concept of an apocalypse is a prediction that at some point the ship will sink and that those who have been reading the maps will know how to swim to dry land.

 

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


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Brian37 wrote:There was a

Brian37 wrote:
There was a much more dogmatic and litteral interpretation of the bible back when it was first written, than their is in our modern secular world. I think the abortion doctor murders and 9/11 hijackers adhear much more closely the words in their holy books than moderates or liberals.

There is no way around the fact that civility flies out the window when it comes to religion. Once you buy the "chosen people" bullshit, it becomes quite easy to manipulate others and harm others. Even Stalin's communism instead of a god, made the "worker" the center of the universe through the same appeal to authority that these Abrahamic gods demand of their supporters.

Liberals and moderates don't help humanity in coddling the insecurities of the wingnuts.

This is why I believe that idealism is the root of all evil and do not believe in fixed concepts of morality. (See my quote from Oscar Wilde.)

I explain my views on this topic in an essay called The Malignancy of Idealism which you can read in my free ebook Materialism is Masturbation : Essays in Freedom by Joe Blow. You can also find it on I-Tunes were it is listed as Materialism is M**********n. I love Apple, but they can be prudes sometimes.

Brian37 wrote:
The books of Abraham are an awsome manifesto for both dictators and mafia bosses and rely on the same sale of credulity and fear and appeal to authority.

By the time the Judeo-Christian concept of God (differing greatly from those dieties of earlier times which often represented only certain aspects of nature or the human psyche) came into being, our society was profoundly neurotic. Civilisation (i.e. repression) had been going on for a long time. A neurotic society is generally controlled by its most neurotic members as long as they are still capable of functioning, because their insecurity makes the control of those less neurotic than themselves an imperative. When we are neurotic, we live in fear of the disowned part of our own nature, and, if unchecked, this fear can manifest itself as the desire to control those who express it or represent it in the external world. For reasons which will be explained later, the human neurosis first appeared in males. It quickly spread to women, but, in general, men tended to be more neurotic. And thus, as we and our society became more neurotic, men felt the need to take control and impose their will to an ever greater degree. Our societies, which in the distant past had been matriarchal because of the primacy of the reproductive role, became patriarchal. This is why God was conceived as not only a man, but an angry, neurotic, intolerant man. Because of the phenomenon known as projection, we create our Gods in our own image, just as we see in the world around us a projection of ourselves.

In a practical sense, fear of God was a way of maintaining the neurotic order of society. One might feel that a sick, miserable, evil society was better than no society at all, a collapse into unstructured barbarism. After all some kind of structure was needed if we were to co-operate enough to develop science and learn to understand ourselves and our world better.

From my free ebook How to Be Free by Joe Blow.

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


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Brian37 wrote:And as I have

Brian37 wrote:
And as I have said consistantly, you can find pleasent memes in non religious texts in both fiction and biogrophies. The only reason religion exists isn't because it is nessesarry, but because people think they need it. We now live without the polythistic gods of Egypt or Rome, and if we scrap Jesus or Buddism as a species are private parts will still function and we would still make babies. 

Religions themselves evolve. They are a history of our meaningful delusions, expressing both the creative and destructive aspects of our psychology. Seeking the hidden meaning within delusions is my specialty. It has had to be my specialty because I have been an especially unwell individual. It has been the process of sifting out the insight from the error in my own delusions which has enabled me to become sane and happy. I just wish to be able to offer what I have learned along the way to others who may be the slave of a delusion, religious or otherwise.

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


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Brian37 wrote: Where we

Brian37 wrote:

 

Where we dissagree is what causes that goodness. Evolution, not the damned superstition, causes it

who is "we" here?  because if it's you and aussie, i actually don't think you disagree.  i'm not convinced he's saying there is any inherent good in any religion or superstition or whatever.  if he is saying there's inherent good in a religion, i invite him to step in and clarify that.

Brian37 wrote:
 

And again "he is saying he gets something out of it". Yea and my point is so what? That does not make it nessesarry to live life.

there you go again, harping on that word "necessary."  he said quite clearly it isn't "necessary" at all.  why do you insist on continuing to bring that up?

Brian37 wrote:
 

Evolution was around long before he was born and there were people even before written tradition that got their jollies off other superstitions. And in the future his favorite comic book will continue to be reviesed or even scrapped in the future for another superstition someone else will get their jollies off of.

again, i think he's ok with that.

Brian37 wrote:

Once you say "my book this" you are locked into that book. If you are going to defend it then defend it, but don't be half assed about it and pretend you don't find it credible when you do.

ok, seriously, if you're going to continuously accuse him of having some secret agenda, then you yourself are not having a rational discussion.  and just why should he be "locked in"?  if a person wants to cherry-pick, why the fuck does it matter to you, especially when that person seems open about it?  cherry-picking seems very rational to me.  you take the shit you find helpful and toss the rest, rather than obstinately insisting the whole thing is right.

i cherry-pick the fuck out of everything.  take buddhism again.  i find zen koans ease depression.  i think the yogacara philosophers had the best ideas about ontology, epistemology, and the nature of perception and existence in recorded human history.  i often wear a mala around my wrist and use it to count mantras because it relieves stress.  does this "lock me in" to buddhism?  because i don't believe in reincarnation, devas or asuras, the trayastrimsha heaven, and i know mt. meru isn't the center of the world, and i find the dalai lama highly suspect, does that make me somehow dishonest?  or do i really believe in all those things and i'm just pretending i don't as some sort of insidious plot to pass as "rational," ingratiate myself to all the "real" rational people, and cleverly "convert" them?

i think if you take a good look at your statement again, you'll realize how stubbornly black-or-white you're being about the whole thing, and i have yet to ever see a rational black-or-white position.

Brian37 wrote:

He is not going to have it both ways in this debate. He is not going to move the goal posts and pretend that is not what he is doing.

i don't see any inconsistencies in his position.  you just don't like his position because it doesn't fit into your erroneous view of religion.  never mind the fact that he is clearly not a religious person.

Brian37 wrote:

Religion is nothing more than a social club, a comic book club at that. 

all of existence is a fucking social club.

Brian37 wrote:

Our political and religious constructs as a species do not constitute nessesity for evolution to occur. We can scrap something for something else or reinvent what we claim and it still amounts to making babies.

who the fuck is disagreeing with you on this?  nobody here is arguing about necessity but you.

Brian37 wrote:

And as I have said consistantly, you can find pleasent memes in non religious texts in both fiction and biogrophies. The only reason religion exists isn't because it is nessesarry, but because people think they need it. We now live without the polythistic gods of Egypt or Rome, and if we scrap Jesus or Buddism as a species are private parts will still function and we would still make babies. 

again, nobody on this thread is arguing with you about this!  i think you really want aussie to argue with you about this, so you keep insisting he is.  i think a person who finds spiritual fulfillment in portions of the bible without believing anybody else needs to, much less actively trying to bash it into other people's heads, makes you uneasy, because you've convinced yourself that religion, of necessity, creates nothing but fanatics and fanatic-enablers.

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson


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Brian37 wrote:He is not

Brian37 wrote:
He is not going to move the goal posts and pretend that is not what he is doing.

To the dualist, who thinks only in terms of competing opposites, there are winners and losers and goal posts. This is not the way a holist views the world.

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


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Precisly

Aussiescribbler wrote:

Old Seer wrote:

Was Jesus a Rationalist Who Tried Largely Unsuccessfully to Use Metaphor to Free the People of His Time from Dogma?_End Quote  what our interpretation is about, and from that understanding we can plainly see that's what the mission of the book is, and leads to. But---the worlds mental direction is opposite and to get another to see it is quite a chore. The book is going East and everyone is going West and can't get the ship turned around.  The trick is to get people to see what the rudder is for.  Any time someone who sees the rudder and says, hey floks this is the rudder over here, he gets persecuted and keel hauled so the captain can't be shown to be the problem because he doesn't want to be rated a fool. JC is the Captain of another ship so the "authorities" keep their ship in a perpetual fog so the people can't see the other, and threw the compass overboard mellenium ago so they themselves can't be questioned. That way they're always right. When the ship hits a rock it's the people's fault for not being able to see through the fog and one guy is picked for the dupe or fall guy and all go back the their quarters thinking justice has been served. But they're still going West. The guy on the sextant is allowed to only speak to the Captain, so when he says to the captain---say there sir, we're in the wrong place. the captain says ---Hmmmmm-OK, go back to your post and I'll think about this (for another 500 years) to see what can be done.  Smiling  
 A very good analogy. And I believe the concept of an apocalypse is a prediction that at some point the ship will sink and that those who have been reading the maps will know how to swim to dry land.

 

You've got excellent insight. If you get time go to my thread Old Seers Corner in general conversations, the last post I rute down and you'll get an idea what problems I've had for the last 8 or 9 months. I need to look over another creation story from the site you directed me to. Isn't it odd that all these stories have such similarities . The brain everywhere must be patterned by nature to come up with such similarities from very different cultures. There's recognizable likenesses between all peoples.     It may stem from intellect for one to ask---who am I, how did I get here, where am I. But not having the progress of information in their time they all came up with a sameness.

 

The only possible thing the world needs saving from are those running it.

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Lies are nothing more then falsehoods searching for the truth


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Holy wow.

Aussiescribbler wrote:

EXC wrote:

What do Jesus' words do to inspire you to do something that you wouldn't otherwise do? If doing something is noble and good, why do you need the bible to inspire you to do it?

Religious books can only make you delusional about reality. So you do harm while believing you are doing good. It is like if you believed that curing people of disease was a good thing to do. But then instead of studying science you studied homeopathic cures. You're trying to do good without the facts, you can't.

Charity, kindness, friendship, family values? Atheists ans other religious people do all of those things without inspiration for the New Testament.

I think the neurosis religious people suffer from is the fact of their own mortality. Jesus' solution was to live in denial, to tell yourself you will live forever in paradise. Denial hardly seems like any kind of a cure, just snake oil.

Moralism is nothing special. There were philosophers preaching morals long before Jesus and there are plenty of them around today. It is not morals that I get from Jesus. In fact one of my beliefs that I feel he backs up is that it is futile and sometimes dangerous to try to live a moral life. This is one of the dangerous aspects of religion, something which served to poison society before Jesus and after. Conventional morality is based on personal or socially imposed discipline, i.e. repression. And repressing any aspect of our psyche means bottling it up and adopting ever greater levels of self-control. Since love is spontaneous, open, honest communication with our fellows, imposed morality makes love, the source of creativity and healing in society, impossible except in very limited circumstances.

What I get from Jesus is not morality, but advice on how to gain deeper emotional and sensual enjoyment of life, how to become less neurotic, less repressed.

Denial of death is a large part of many people's religious belief, but I don't believe that it was the origin of religion. I believe that religion began as a response to neurotic guilt arising from conflict between males and females amongst our prehuman ancestors. If they felt bad about fighting with each other and then a lightning bolt hit a tree nearby they would have come to feel that there was some angry supernatural being that might punish them.

The essence of the human neurosis is that we feel bad about ourselves and feel we need to prove our worth by being smarter, stronger, prettier, more fashionable, richer, or whatever, than someone else. Instead of simply accepting ourselves as we are and sensually enjoying all the things that life has to offer we become ego-embattled. And ego-embattlement can lead to paranoia, in which we indentify those aspects we refuse to acknowledge in our own psyche with the behaviour of others and fight against them in some way. So religious people who wish to deny their own capacity for reason often feel the need to argue with atheists. And atheists who wish to deny that powerful irrational forces still lie beneath the superficial skin of the their rationality feel the need to argue with religious people.

When Jesus talked about not having to die, I don't think he was talking about physical death. Each of us is an expression of the creative principle of the universe, a little parcel of life itself, bounded by a physical body and an ego, both of which will one day cease to exist. (Actually the concept that the ego and body are fixed entities is not really sound. Each is a system which is always changing but which has many qualities which tend to persist.) To the extent that we may be able to experience ourselves as eternal it can only be by identifying with that aspect of of ourselves which is life itself rather than with any aspect of our individual personality or bodily structure. But I believe that what Jesus was talking about was the living death of ego-embattlement which leaves us severely limited in the ways in which we can interact with other people (inhibited by a rigid character armour as Wilhelm Reich put it), physically and emotionally obtunded. Neurosis can turn us into virtual zombies. We weren't born that way. Jesus quite often used children as examples, he pointed out that they were already living in "heaven" and that they lived in a real world which was hidden to the "wise and learned" (that is those who used their rational mind not to explore reality but to build convoluted intellectual hiding places for their wounded egos).

Jesus basic advice was : be honest, be non-judgemental, be generous. There is no bogie man in the sky who will judge you, so just relax and open up to your deepest desire, which is to be unconditionally loving.

Lets take the example of sex. The joy of sex is the healing union of two or more individuals through the giving and receiving of pleasure. If we are ego-embattled we may want to take pleasure but be unable to give it. This means we are denying ourselves the essential ecstasy of the experience. And this is true of all of life. The degree to which we can enjoy it and the degree to which we can be creative is the degree to which we can open up to it. If we are closed off within the lonely cage of our own ego, we can't enjoy much at all.

As Wilhelm Reich put it :

"Outside the trap, right close by, is living Life, all around one, in everything the eye can see and the ear can hear and the nose can smell. To the victims within the trap it is eternal agony, a temptation as for Tantalus. You see it, you feel it, you smell it, you eternally long for it, yet you can never get through the exit out of the trap. To get out of the trap simply has become an impossibility. It can only be had in dreams and in poems and in great music and paintings, but it is no longer in your motility. The keys to the exit are cemented into your own character armour and into the mechanical rigidity of your body and soul.

This is the great Tragedy. And Christ happened to know it."

Wilhelm Reich, The Murder of Christ, 1953.

Once again, when it comes to references to "Heaven" and "Hell", I don't believe that Jesus was talking about something which occurs after death, but rather states of mind we can experience here and now. As a person who had a long battle with bipolar disorder, I've spent time in both Heaven and Hell. We tend to make our own Hell when we try to run from the truth. Take the example of a man who has the desire to have sex with other men. If he tries to deny these feelings he will bring hellish suffering upon himself. If he lives out his desires in a surreptitious way, pretending to the world at large that he is not gay, he will still be unhappy and probably fearful of being found out. But if he finds the courage to live honestly then, even though he might be subjected to persecution, he will find within himself the rich rewards that come with the integrity of being himself without pretence. All of us, in one way or another, are liable to be like that. Most of us put on some kind of a front, and thus are, to some extent, at war with ourselves. For me one of the principle lessons taught by Jesus is that we should come out of our own personal closet, that we should be honest about ourselves. Reputedly he liked to hang around with the drunkards and the whores. They were his people, because they didn't try to be something they were not. But he heaped scorn upon the Pharisees, calling them "vipers", because they were full of shit, they were complete hypocrites.

Unfortunately, the human neurosis contaminates everything it touches, and so, no sooner was Jesus cold in his grave than the medicine he had been offering to those around him was converted by his followers into the deadliest of poisons. His advice to be honest, non-judgemental and generous and live in the real world, with all the bliss and creativity that that makes possible, was recast as a supernatural belief system which viewed his death and the myth that he had risen again as being of more significance than anything he said. And in time the church which grew out of it would become an authoritarian monstrosity just like that of the Pharisees.

I've been looking closely at this post and I,m baffaloed. You are so close to to our determinations I am betting with my self that in a couple of weeks I'll be getting a note from Alpha Smurf with a welcome into our world---or maybe ---be welcomed into yours. This is definitly not two worlds colliding lemme tell ya. I'll to go over this again. By the way I got on site to your writings and looking forward to some downloads. Gotta see where I can store them on this here machine, I'm not that up to snuff on computors. a little practice is needed.  Say---is the sun upside down where you are ---  I wunder what its like looking at North backwards.   Smiling   Smiling  Smiling

The only possible thing the world needs saving from are those running it.

https://sites.google.com/site/oldseers

Knowledge trumps faith and I'm not a Theist

Lies are nothing more then falsehoods searching for the truth


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Old Seer wrote:I've been

Old Seer wrote:
I've been looking closely at this post and I,m baffaloed. You are so close to to our determinations I am betting with my self that in a couple of weeks I'll be getting a note from Alpha Smurf with a welcome into our world---or maybe ---be welcomed into yours. This is definitly not two worlds colliding lemme tell ya. I'll to go over this again. By the way I got on site to your writings and looking forward to some downloads. Gotta see where I can store them on this here machine, I'm not that up to snuff on computors. a little practice is needed.  Say---is the sun upside down where you are ---  I wunder what its like looking at North backwards.   Smiling   Smiling  Smiling

I'm glad to hear that it strikes a chord with you and that you have been developing similar ideas. While many people have had good things to say about my ideas what I long for is colleagues who can help in developing them, applying them and testing them out.

The sun and me are both upside down, and at this time of the year it gets a bit hot. Due to the force of gravity the sweat drips up towards the earth though. Sticking out tongue

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


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VI Theater is crap

Aussiescribbler wrote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
Mine is the gospels are collections of street plays used to gather crowds or illustrate points. I say this because they have essentially no description of people and places. It is what we find in plays so any actor can play any part and the required scenery is minimal such as a fig tree. The scenes are almost monologs so a member of the audience (invited for audience participation or a plant) needs only say one line that leads to a Jesus monolog.

So if you ask about content these would have been stories refined for decades before live audiences.

As a person who has a great interest in the process of theatrical improvisation this concept interests me. On of my biggest inspirations is the book Impro : Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone. While I find it hard to imagine a writer creating Jesus the character, it does not seem impossible to me that a tradition of theatrical improvisation in which performers opened up the depths of their subconscious through spontaneous performances might have given birth to a fictional archetypal creation with a kind of life of his own in the minds of those who participated or observed. This is much like the concept of "channelling" which I don't see as something supernatural but rather an opening up of something within  the individuals own deeper psychology. As Johnstone says, there is more is us than us. Our conscious mind is less than the tip of the iceberg of what we are.

Lets first start with all that being long discarded Jungian and Freudian cult gibberish. That is how they ran their psychoanalysis con that L. Ron Hubbard copied.

Considering the dying and reborn god story was around for many gods long before this Jesus character was invented what you find hard to believe is a well known fact. So you will have to explain further what you are talking about or simply do some reading and discover how common other gods did this same thing. That the story was reinvented and set in a Greek idea of what the Galilee was like is nothing new. The same story type is always being reinvented or in Hollywood terms, reimagined.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml


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VI Theater is crap

Aussiescribbler wrote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
Mine is the gospels are collections of street plays used to gather crowds or illustrate points. I say this because they have essentially no description of people and places. It is what we find in plays so any actor can play any part and the required scenery is minimal such as a fig tree. The scenes are almost monologs so a member of the audience (invited for audience participation or a plant) needs only say one line that leads to a Jesus monolog.

So if you ask about content these would have been stories refined for decades before live audiences.

As a person who has a great interest in the process of theatrical improvisation this concept interests me. On of my biggest inspirations is the book Impro : Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone. While I find it hard to imagine a writer creating Jesus the character, it does not seem impossible to me that a tradition of theatrical improvisation in which performers opened up the depths of their subconscious through spontaneous performances might have given birth to a fictional archetypal creation with a kind of life of his own in the minds of those who participated or observed. This is much like the concept of "channelling" which I don't see as something supernatural but rather an opening up of something within  the individuals own deeper psychology. As Johnstone says, there is more is us than us. Our conscious mind is less than the tip of the iceberg of what we are.

Lets first start with all that being long discarded Jungian and Freudian cult gibberish. That is how they ran their psychoanalysis con that L. Ron Hubbard copied.

Considering the dying and reborn god story was around for many gods long before this Jesus character was invented what you find hard to believe is a well known fact. So you will have to explain further what you are talking about or simply do some reading and discover how common other gods did this same thing. That the story was reinvented and set in a Greek idea of what the Galilee was like is nothing new. The same story type is always being reinvented or in Hollywood terms, reimagined.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml


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Well hey

Aussiescribbler wrote:

Old Seer wrote:
I've been looking closely at this post and I,m baffaloed. You are so close to to our determinations I am betting with my self that in a couple of weeks I'll be getting a note from Alpha Smurf with a welcome into our world---or maybe ---be welcomed into yours. This is definitly not two worlds colliding lemme tell ya. I'll to go over this again. By the way I got on site to your writings and looking forward to some downloads. Gotta see where I can store them on this here machine, I'm not that up to snuff on computors. a little practice is needed.  Say---is the sun upside down where you are ---  I wunder what its like looking at North backwards.   Smiling   Smiling  Smiling

I'm glad to hear that it strikes a chord with you and that you have been developing similar ideas. While many people have had good things to say about my ideas what I long for is colleagues who can help in developing them, applying them and testing them out.

The sun and me are both upside down, and at this time of the year it gets a bit hot. Due to the force of gravity the sweat drips up towards the earth though. Sticking out tongue

We've run smack dab into each other. No need to further consider colleagues, you got,em.

The only possible thing the world needs saving from are those running it.

https://sites.google.com/site/oldseers

Knowledge trumps faith and I'm not a Theist

Lies are nothing more then falsehoods searching for the truth


A_Nony_Mouse
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.

RobbyPants wrote:

Brian37 wrote:
Your views, so? All you are saying is that Jesus said some pretty stuff you like. SO WHAT.

You cherry pick the bible which is full of nasty stories, even if "metaphor" which is a cop out because you water them down to be  metaphor and take the pretty stories and focus on those. EVERYONE DOES THAT.

I'm curious if anyone has published a book where they do the opposite. Take all the terrible stories, assume they're true, and use that as the basis for which portions you cherry pick, leaving all the "nice" stories of love and compassion as metaphor.

I mean, really, that approach is equally valid as the opposite; it just leaves the terrible nature of god much more obviously apparent. I think that's what I'm going to do the next time someone tells me which parts are true and which are metaphors. I'll just correct them and tell them they have it exactly backward.

Or take a look at ancient mythology and ask how intelligent people could have taken it seriously and assume they used the same method of writing off the dumb parts as metaphor. They could then postulate what Hercules really did instead of the labors and take it all as metaphor of striving for excellance.

Either way it is arguing to a preconceived conclusion. Any of us, even I, could be here to save the human race from itself if our chroniclers only wrote about the two or three good parts of our lives.

 

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml


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We hold to

Old Seer wrote:

Aussiescribbler wrote:

EXC wrote:

What do Jesus' words do to inspire you to do something that you wouldn't otherwise do? If doing something is noble and good, why do you need the bible to inspire you to do it?

Religious books can only make you delusional about reality. So you do harm while believing you are doing good. It is like if you believed that curing people of disease was a good thing to do. But then instead of studying science you studied homeopathic cures. You're trying to do good without the facts, you can't.

Charity, kindness, friendship, family values? Atheists ans other religious people do all of those things without inspiration for the New Testament.

I think the neurosis religious people suffer from is the fact of their own mortality. Jesus' solution was to live in denial, to tell yourself you will live forever in paradise. Denial hardly seems like any kind of a cure, just snake oil.

Moralism is nothing special. There were philosophers preaching morals long before Jesus and there are plenty of them around today. It is not morals that I get from Jesus. In fact one of my beliefs that I feel he backs up is that it is futile and sometimes dangerous to try to live a moral life. This is one of the dangerous aspects of religion, something which served to poison society before Jesus and after. Conventional morality is based on personal or socially imposed discipline, i.e. repression. And repressing any aspect of our psyche means bottling it up and adopting ever greater levels of self-control. Since love is spontaneous, open, honest communication with our fellows, imposed morality makes love, the source of creativity and healing in society, impossible except in very limited circumstances.

What I get from Jesus is not morality, but advice on how to gain deeper emotional and sensual enjoyment of life, how to become less neurotic, less repressed.

Denial of death is a large part of many people's religious belief, but I don't believe that it was the origin of religion. I believe that religion began as a response to neurotic guilt arising from conflict between males and females amongst our prehuman ancestors. If they felt bad about fighting with each other and then a lightning bolt hit a tree nearby they would have come to feel that there was some angry supernatural being that might punish them.

The essence of the human neurosis is that we feel bad about ourselves and feel we need to prove our worth by being smarter, stronger, prettier, more fashionable, richer, or whatever, than someone else. Instead of simply accepting ourselves as we are and sensually enjoying all the things that life has to offer we become ego-embattled. And ego-embattlement can lead to paranoia, in which we indentify those aspects we refuse to acknowledge in our own psyche with the behaviour of others and fight against them in some way. So religious people who wish to deny their own capacity for reason often feel the need to argue with atheists. And atheists who wish to deny that powerful irrational forces still lie beneath the superficial skin of the their rationality feel the need to argue with religious people.

When Jesus talked about not having to die, I don't think he was talking about physical death. Each of us is an expression of the creative principle of the universe, a little parcel of life itself, bounded by a physical body and an ego, both of which will one day cease to exist. (Actually the concept that the ego and body are fixed entities is not really sound. Each is a system which is always changing but which has many qualities which tend to persist.) To the extent that we may be able to experience ourselves as eternal it can only be by identifying with that aspect of of ourselves which is life itself rather than with any aspect of our individual personality or bodily structure. But I believe that what Jesus was talking about was the living death of ego-embattlement which leaves us severely limited in the ways in which we can interact with other people (inhibited by a rigid character armour as Wilhelm Reich put it), physically and emotionally obtunded. Neurosis can turn us into virtual zombies. We weren't born that way. Jesus quite often used children as examples, he pointed out that they were already living in "heaven" and that they lived in a real world which was hidden to the "wise and learned" (that is those who used their rational mind not to explore reality but to build convoluted intellectual hiding places for their wounded egos).

Jesus basic advice was : be honest, be non-judgemental, be generous. There is no bogie man in the sky who will judge you, so just relax and open up to your deepest desire, which is to be unconditionally loving.

Lets take the example of sex. The joy of sex is the healing union of two or more individuals through the giving and receiving of pleasure. If we are ego-embattled we may want to take pleasure but be unable to give it. This means we are denying ourselves the essential ecstasy of the experience. And this is true of all of life. The degree to which we can enjoy it and the degree to which we can be creative is the degree to which we can open up to it. If we are closed off within the lonely cage of our own ego, we can't enjoy much at all.

As Wilhelm Reich put it :

"Outside the trap, right close by, is living Life, all around one, in everything the eye can see and the ear can hear and the nose can smell. To the victims within the trap it is eternal agony, a temptation as for Tantalus. You see it, you feel it, you smell it, you eternally long for it, yet you can never get through the exit out of the trap. To get out of the trap simply has become an impossibility. It can only be had in dreams and in poems and in great music and paintings, but it is no longer in your motility. The keys to the exit are cemented into your own character armour and into the mechanical rigidity of your body and soul.

This is the great Tragedy. And Christ happened to know it."

Wilhelm Reich, The Murder of Christ, 1953.

Once again, when it comes to references to "Heaven" and "Hell", I don't believe that Jesus was talking about something which occurs after death, but rather states of mind we can experience here and now. As a person who had a long battle with bipolar disorder, I've spent time in both Heaven and Hell. We tend to make our own Hell when we try to run from the truth. Take the example of a man who has the desire to have sex with other men. If he tries to deny these feelings he will bring hellish suffering upon himself. If he lives out his desires in a surreptitious way, pretending to the world at large that he is not gay, he will still be unhappy and probably fearful of being found out. But if he finds the courage to live honestly then, even though he might be subjected to persecution, he will find within himself the rich rewards that come with the integrity of being himself without pretence. All of us, in one way or another, are liable to be like that. Most of us put on some kind of a front, and thus are, to some extent, at war with ourselves. For me one of the principle lessons taught by Jesus is that we should come out of our own personal closet, that we should be honest about ourselves. Reputedly he liked to hang around with the drunkards and the whores. They were his people, because they didn't try to be something they were not. But he heaped scorn upon the Pharisees, calling them "vipers", because they were full of shit, they were complete hypocrites.

Unfortunately, the human neurosis contaminates everything it touches, and so, no sooner was Jesus cold in his grave than the medicine he had been offering to those around him was converted by his followers into the deadliest of poisons. His advice to be honest, non-judgemental and generous and live in the real world, with all the bliss and creativity that that makes possible, was recast as a supernatural belief system which viewed his death and the myth that he had risen again as being of more significance than anything he said. And in time the church which grew out of it would become an authoritarian monstrosity just like that of the Pharisees.

I've been looking closely at this post and I,m baffaloed. You are so close to to our determinations I am betting with my self that in a couple of weeks I'll be getting a note from Alpha Smurf with a welcome into our world---or maybe ---be welcomed into yours. This is definitly not two worlds colliding lemme tell ya. I'll to go over this again. By the way I got on site to your writings and looking forward to some downloads. Gotta see where I can store them on this here machine, I'm not that up to snuff on computors. a little practice is needed.  Say---is the sun upside down where you are ---  I wunder what its like looking at North backwards.   Smiling   Smiling  Smiling

heaven: a state of mind of peace and contentment, the mind of a child in no right or wrong and only the applicable knowledge of good and evil.

Hell: the state of death/nonexistence, condition as before one existed. But total lack of condition. Zero person

 

The only possible thing the world needs saving from are those running it.

https://sites.google.com/site/oldseers

Knowledge trumps faith and I'm not a Theist

Lies are nothing more then falsehoods searching for the truth


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All exist within

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

RobbyPants wrote:

Brian37 wrote:
Your views, so? All you are saying is that Jesus said some pretty stuff you like. SO WHAT.

You cherry pick the bible which is full of nasty stories, even if "metaphor" which is a cop out because you water them down to be  metaphor and take the pretty stories and focus on those. EVERYONE DOES THAT.

I'm curious if anyone has published a book where they do the opposite. Take all the terrible stories, assume they're true, and use that as the basis for which portions you cherry pick, leaving all the "nice" stories of love and compassion as metaphor.

I mean, really, that approach is equally valid as the opposite; it just leaves the terrible nature of god much more obviously apparent. I think that's what I'm going to do the next time someone tells me which parts are true and which are metaphors. I'll just correct them and tell them they have it exactly backward.

Or take a look at ancient mythology and ask how intelligent people could have taken it seriously and assume they used the same method of writing off the dumb parts as metaphor. They could then postulate what Hercules really did instead of the labors and take it all as metaphor of striving for excellance.

Either way it is arguing to a preconceived conclusion. Any of us, even I, could be here to save the human race from itself if our chroniclers only wrote about the two or three good parts of our lives.

 

the confines of good and evil. It is life.

The only possible thing the world needs saving from are those running it.

https://sites.google.com/site/oldseers

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A_Nony_Mouse wrote:Lets

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
Lets first start with all that being long discarded Jungian and Freudian cult gibberish. That is how they ran their psychoanalysis con that L. Ron Hubbard copied.

Fools may have discarded Jung and Freud. I have not. I view this throwing of a bold exploration of depth psychology onto the garbage heap as an act of cowardice by increasingly insecure intellectuals who are suffering from what R. D. Laing called "psychophobia" (i.e. fear of one's own mind).

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


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A_Nony_Mouse wrote:Or take a

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
Or take a look at ancient mythology and ask how intelligent people could have taken it seriously and assume they used the same method of writing off the dumb parts as metaphor. They could then postulate what Hercules really did instead of the labors and take it all as metaphor of striving for excellance.

Either way it is arguing to a preconceived conclusion. Any of us, even I, could be here to save the human race from itself if our chroniclers only wrote about the two or three good parts of our lives.

How do we really know what percentage of ancient Greeks took the stories of the gods as parables rather than literal descriptions of real events?

It seems to me that arguing to preconceived conclusions is something you know a lot about.

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


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Old Seer wrote:heaven: a

Old Seer wrote:

heaven: a state of mind of peace and contentment, the mind of a child in no right or wrong and only the applicable knowledge of good and evil.

Hell: the state of death/nonexistence, condition as before one existed. But total lack of condition. Zero person

I agree on the former but not on the latter.

Death or nonexistence is a neutral. To me hell is mental or physical suffering. In my life hell has been characterised by depression and anxiety. But it should be understood that this hell is not a punishment for misdeeds. Some of Jesus advice on how to avoid hell I believe has been misunderstood in this way. Rather I identify his teachings with my own mental health principles - complete self acceptance ("your sins are forgiven you" ) , acceptance of others ("non-judgement" ) and honesty. If we suffer because we are having difficulty accepting ourselves or others or being honest it is not that we are being punished any more than getting lung cancer is a punishment for taking up smoking, something that many did when it was not believed to be bad for them.

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


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My philosophy of writing

 A while ago on these boards I asked for some advice on what term I should use to describe myself. Elsewhere some people were implying that they viewed me as an atheist while others called me a theist. A number of different names for different kinds of belief were suggested to me. I went away and read the definitions, and the conclusion I came to is that I'm a pantheist. I believe that everything is god. But I'm not a religious person. I don't believe in received dogma that is accepted on faith. I only believe what conforms to my own sense of intuition and reason. And I don't believe in worshipping anything. This would be ridiculous in for a pantheist. If everything is god, then I too am god, so why would I worship myself? Now you could say, "Why call everything god? Why not call everything the universe?" To identify the universe with the god concept is to view the universe as essentially unified. To view it as one interrelated thing. And also to view it as something which is inherently creative. But this is not a supernatural belief. To believe in the supernatural is to be a dualist - to believe in some magical realm (a kind of parallel universe) which is mostly separated from the natural universe but can invade it at any time and temporarily overturn its laws. I believe there is only the natural universe with its steady reliable laws (some of which we are no doubt yet to understand). The creative principle is intrinsic, not extrinsic. A seed grows into a tree by realising its genetic potentials in its environment. This is how creation takes place, not by some supernatural artist designing a pretty tree.

How does this belief system influence my writing? This is well expressed by William Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell :

The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert, that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.

Isaiah answer'd, I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then persuaded, & remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote.

All of my writing is an experiment. I make no claims for it. And the only test I have for whether any of it is true is whether it has a beneficial effect on others. As Jesus said : "By their fruits shall ye know them." If my ideas bear fruit then I will conclude that there is something to them. If they die on the vine, well then, it is back to the drawing board. Smiling

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


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A_Nony_Mouse wrote:Lets

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

Lets first start with all that being long discarded Jungian and Freudian cult gibberish. That is how they ran their psychoanalysis con that L. Ron Hubbard copied.

This is a common dialectical confidence trick. Try to discredit something genuine by associating it with a fraudulent imitation.

You have suggested that I do my research on the history of religion. Perhaps you should do some research into the history of psychoanalysis and the talking cure and those whose lives have been benefited or even been saved by it. I'm one of them. As I explained above when someone was worried that I might not be receiving care from a professional psychiatrist. I am and she has Freud's books on her shelf. She uses medication and the talking therapy which has grown out of the approach developed by Freud.

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


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OK That leaves for me a blank

Aussiescribbler wrote:

Old Seer wrote:

heaven: a state of mind of peace and contentment, the mind of a child in no right or wrong and only the applicable knowledge of good and evil.

Hell: the state of death/nonexistence, condition as before one existed. But total lack of condition. Zero person

I agree on the former but not on the latter.

Death or nonexistence is a neutral. To me hell is mental or physical suffering. In my life hell has been characterised by depression and anxiety. But it should be understood that this hell is not a punishment for misdeeds. Some of Jesus advice on how to avoid hell I believe has been misunderstood in this way. Rather I identify his teachings with my own mental health principles - complete self acceptance ("your sins are forgiven you" ) , acceptance of others ("non-judgement" ) and honesty. If we suffer because we are having difficulty accepting ourselves or others or being honest it is not that we are being punished any more than getting lung cancer is a punishment for taking up smoking, something that many did when it was not believed to be bad for them.

On one item. The state one is in (in death someone can't be a "one", as I see it-one is gone) in death. The greek biblical statement "the grave" denotes dead body, as there's no logical reason for a grave except to encompass a dead physical. The hole in my head is---what is that. The conclusion would be no person present. But that's not the hell of the world. The hell of the world is punishment after life.  So the person is a nothing and the physical is just that---an item incapable of carrying on life. Neutral works OK. But what does one do with the Greek point of view. It could be some thing one needn't take into account. I haven't gone that thought line before. We don't see hell as a punishment either--it's a consequence of a previous physical or mental event.

The suffering of one alive can be hell --I agree, as one of my brothers stated years ago-- life can be hell and we don't know it until your in the middle of it. But that can be due to the mental direction we're in and it's consequences. We've become the victims of our own inventions---mental and physical/material.

 

The only possible thing the world needs saving from are those running it.

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Agree

Aussiescribbler wrote:

 A while ago on these boards I asked for some advice on what term I should use to describe myself. Elsewhere some people were implying that they viewed me as an atheist while others called me a theist. A number of different names for different kinds of belief were suggested to me. I went away and read the definitions, and the conclusion I came to is that I'm a pantheist. I believe that everything is god. But I'm not a religious person. I don't believe in received dogma that is accepted on faith. I only believe what conforms to my own sense of intuition and reason. And I don't believe in worshipping anything. This would be ridiculous in for a pantheist. If everything is god, then I too am god, so why would I worship myself? Now you could say, "Why call everything god? Why not call everything the universe?" To identify the universe with the god concept is to view the universe as essentially unified. To view it as one interrelated thing. And also to view it as something which is inherently creative. But this is not a supernatural belief. To believe in the supernatural is to be a dualist - to believe in some magical realm (a kind of parallel universe) which is mostly separated from the natural universe but can invade it at any time and temporarily overturn its laws. I believe there is only the natural universe with its steady reliable laws (some of which we are no doubt yet to understand). The creative principle is intrinsic, not extrinsic. A seed grows into a tree by realising its genetic potentials in its environment. This is how creation takes place, not by some supernatural artist designing a pretty tree.

How does this belief system influence my writing? This is well expressed by William Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell :

The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert, that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.

Isaiah answer'd, I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then persuaded, & remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote.

All of my writing is an experiment. I make no claims for it. And the only test I have for whether any of it is true is whether it has a beneficial effect on others. As Jesus said : "By their fruits shall ye know them." If my ideas bear fruit then I will conclude that there is something to them. If they die on the vine, well then, it is back to the drawing board. Smiling

The same with our interpretations--- it's up to the recipient to accept or deny. But, help them to understand by their questions ask. What "is" and "isn't is to be determined by the individual.   Smiling

 

 

The only possible thing the world needs saving from are those running it.

https://sites.google.com/site/oldseers

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Lies are nothing more then falsehoods searching for the truth


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I posted a while back

Aussiescribbler wrote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
Lets first start with all that being long discarded Jungian and Freudian cult gibberish. That is how they ran their psychoanalysis con that L. Ron Hubbard copied.

Fools may have discarded Jung and Freud. I have not. I view this throwing of a bold exploration of depth psychology onto the garbage heap as an act of cowardice by increasingly insecure intellectuals who are suffering from what R. D. Laing called "psychophobia" (i.e. fear of one's own mind).

Freud and others were fools. well- that sure wasn't the way the others saw it--I thought they did. I head about it They are lacking the total of it all but there's to much to dismiss that's useful. I remember a time when the term neurosis was discussed. About how the term was changed to something other. I don't know what as I'm not a psycho dude. I couldn't get interested because of long Greek terms---and it remained Greek to me. If you want to discuss gear ratios and linear stresses, elastisaty, or focal lenths go fo it---har harr. Smiling

The only possible thing the world needs saving from are those running it.

https://sites.google.com/site/oldseers

Knowledge trumps faith and I'm not a Theist

Lies are nothing more then falsehoods searching for the truth


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Old Seer wrote:On one item.

Old Seer wrote:
On one item. The state one is in (in death someone can't be a "one", as I see it-one is gone) in death. The greek biblical statement "the grave" denotes dead body, as there's no logical reason for a grave except to encompass a dead physical. The hole in my head is---what is that. The conclusion would be no person present. But that's not the hell of the world. The hell of the world is punishment after life.  So the person is a nothing and the physical is just that---an item incapable of carrying on life. Neutral works OK. But what does one do with the Greek point of view. It could be some thing one needn't take into account. I haven't gone that thought line before. We don't see hell as a punishment either--it's a consequence of a previous physical or mental event.

I'm not sure I understand. Is there a particular statement in the bible relating to "the grave" that you are trying to interpret?

My views on life and death are once again perhaps most eloquently put by William Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell :

 

The voice of the Devil

 

All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors.


1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.

2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, call'd Good, is alone from the Soul.

3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.


But the following Contraries to these are True


1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age

2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.

3. Energy is eternal delight.

 

Think of the body like a television set and consciousness as the program flowing through it, as picked up by the senses. Death is the end of the television set, but the program is still playing on any other sets which still happen to be around. So to use the Jesus example : Jesus is dead (or never existed) but the Jesus program is still in re-runs today on a new generation of television sets. We are really just the same person in billions of bodies. Each individual has different knowledge and beliefs, but these are essentially superficial, even if they do often lead us into conflict with each other (just as cells in the human body sometimes compete). The deeper you go into our nature the more we are the same. At our very essence we are a single individual. The more superficial our thinking is the more we fear death. It is the ego which fears death. An inflexible ego can be broken at any time, even while the body remains unbroken. This is what we call a breakdown. A breakdown may be a death of the ego which is followed by a rebirth or resurrection of the ego, but it will be a different ego even if composed of the same memories. Impermanence is an inescapable quality of a creative universe. Permanence could only ever exist in a totally dead universe.

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


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Ahhh yes I recognize it

Aussiescribbler wrote:

Old Seer wrote:
On one item. The state one is in (in death someone can't be a "one", as I see it-one is gone) in death. The greek biblical statement "the grave" denotes dead body, as there's no logical reason for a grave except to encompass a dead physical. The hole in my head is---what is that. The conclusion would be no person present. But that's not the hell of the world. The hell of the world is punishment after life.  So the person is a nothing and the physical is just that---an item incapable of carrying on life. Neutral works OK. But what does one do with the Greek point of view. It could be some thing one needn't take into account. I haven't gone that thought line before. We don't see hell as a punishment either--it's a consequence of a previous physical or mental event.

I'm not sure I understand. Is there a particular statement in the bible relating to "the grave" that you are trying to interpret?

My views on life and death are once again perhaps most eloquently put by William Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell :

 

The voice of the Devil

 

All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors.


1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.

2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, call'd Good, is alone from the Soul.

3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.


But the following Contraries to these are True


1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age

2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.

3. Energy is eternal delight.

 

Think of the body like a television set and consciousness as the program flowing through it, as picked up by the senses. Death is the end of the television set, but the program is still playing on any other sets which still happen to be around. So to use the Jesus example : Jesus is dead (or never existed) but the Jesus program is still in re-runs today on a new generation of television sets. We are really just the same person in billions of bodies. Each individual has different knowledge and beliefs, but these are essentially superficial, even if they do often lead us into conflict with each other (just as cells in the human body sometimes compete). The deeper you go into our nature the more we are the same. At our very essence we are a single individual. The more superficial our thinking is the more we fear death. It is the ego which fears death. An inflexible ego can be broken at any time, even while the body remains unbroken. This is what we call a breakdown. A breakdown may be a death of the ego which is followed by a rebirth or resurrection of the ego, but it will be a different ego even if composed of the same memories. Impermanence is an inescapable quality of a creative universe. Permanence could only ever exist in a totally dead universe.

I think it might be Hundu---The one in the many and the many in the one. There's another fromm JC --I am in the father and the father is in me. If I am in you then you are in the father and we are all in one. That may not be the exact word string but close. The book uses the singular in many cases to denote the many. All have the same inner makeup so in the universe there is one spiritual but many bodies. we see this plainly. It isn't a matter of male and female as an apostle says---there is neither male nor female in the ways of JC (Adam). The superficial counts for something and has it's place, but the world is way to superficial. The God that needs to be worried about is the mentality of the body's importance being placed above the person. Way to much emphasis on the material and physical. We've got the mind following the body instead of the body controlled by the mind. I'm not sure if I'm afraid of death or not. If death bothers me it's because I appreciate life very highly, and I'm not very materialistic. I don't know where to put myself on fear of death scale. I know in combat I become very calm after the initials are over---normally a few seconds. After that LOOOOgout, I'm on the job. but that's long gone at this time. A low level of paranoia is necessary to keep one on the alert for danger--but to much is a harmful mental condition.

The only possible thing the world needs saving from are those running it.

https://sites.google.com/site/oldseers

Knowledge trumps faith and I'm not a Theist

Lies are nothing more then falsehoods searching for the truth


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VII Orthodox was the only church

Aussiescribbler wrote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
The words survived though military force backing the religion. They survived by killing off dissenters. They survived by killing off all competing religions other than Judaism. One need not invoke miracles when one has the sword.

You may dismiss that as crude but the primary reason for conversion was when the law permitted only Christians to be protected by the courts including in matters of inheritance. Only Christians could write wills and only Christians could inheret. If there was a property dispute with a Christian the courts would not hear the case unless the complainant was also a Christian. But still if one refused to convert where was one going to worship when temples were being destroyed and their priests murdered in the streets? And still if one held out one's best hope was a quick lynching by one's loving, christian neighbors.

When one looks at the reality only a fool would think the reality is not a complete and sufficent explanation for the successful spread of Christianity. Further looking at the facts of how it did spread I have to wonder where this idea of loving Christians converting with kindness and prayer got started. They bragged about their methods at the time.

I can only assume you have never taken the time to look into the facts but instead have not progressed beyond the lies the preachers tell you. AND the things I recited above are taught in all seminaries and divinity schools so when I say they are lying they do know the facts were as I recited them and if they tell you anything else they are lying by all definitions of the term.

I think that my statements about believing that the orthodox Christian church is an obscenity should make it clear that I'm aware of its dark history. I've learned nothing from preachers. I'm not a religious person. I've only attended church services a handful of times in my 50 years, and that was as an observer not a participant. I'm an anarchist. I hate any form of authoritarianism.
 Again I must refer to real history. At the time of the events I referred to and for centuries afterwards there was only one empire and one church. There was no split between Constantinople and Rome at that time. It was all the same church. The kinds of things I mentioned occurred as commonly and as readily in Rome and Egypt as in Byzantium and all with the same approval of both church and state which were still one.  
Quote:
Now it is quite possible I could find something useful in other religious texts. I haven't got around to reading any.
 To be honest from the lack of judgment you are showing and your ability to ignore what you don't want to know you could likely find inspiration in Ben Franklin's sayings and Ann Landers.  
Quote:
All I've read of the New Testament is the Gospels and Revelations. I've probably read Matthew all the way through about three times in my life. The other gospels I've probably only read once each. Revelations I have a tendency to re-read when I've been a bit psycho. I always think it will make sense then and it never really does. But just reading these books those few times, and re-reading passages when I want to use a quote from it in my writing is enough for Jesus words to have seeped into the depths of my consciousness.

 

Lets be clear what you are reading. It is the result of a four year translation effort and ten years of prettying up the language by the best writers and poets in the time of king James. The metaphors invented, force fit onto the real text, were picked up by later English translations and filtered back into the German. You are not being impressed by the words but by the artistic effort applied to make the text appealing.

 

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml


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Aussiescribbler wrote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
Jesus is a cardboard cutout when viewed solely in the context of the gospels with nothing whatsoever added. No hymns in the background, no lighting effects and no 1800 years of add-ons to what is related in the gospels. It is well established no one outside of western culture reading only the gospel stories without the add-ons finds him any kind of exceptional character. I can point out Jews in Israel do not see what you see nor do Jews in some parts of New York City. But in those same places you can find your view but applied to David.

What about Mahatma Gandhi? He was not a Christian and grew up in a society made up of Hindus and Muslims, but he you can find his thoughts on Jesus here.

Gandhi spent much of his time aroung the Brits in India, got his higher education and law degree in England and practiced law for decades before doing the return to his roots gimmick. I have read people claiming a serious interest in Hinduism after less than a year in India. Converts to Islam are too numerous to mention often not even needing time in Muslim countries.

I do not Gandhi in need of special explanation.

That said, When asked his opinion of Christianity he replied that Europeans should try it some day. Clever and politically astute but not an opinion of Christianity.

In the link you cite he is not talking as though he read the gospels but rather what people say about the gospels, the cultural add-ons. If you actually take the red letter gospel teachings there is nothing profound or original. He was educated enough and was interested enough in religions that he could not have failed to notice this. 

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml


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A_Nony_Mouse wrote: Again I

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
 Again I must refer to real history. At the time of the events I referred to and for centuries afterwards there was only one empire and one church. There was no split between Constantinople and Rome at that time. It was all the same church. The kinds of things I mentioned occurred as commonly and as readily in Rome and Egypt as in Byzantium and all with the same approval of both church and state which were still one. 

 

What I'm talking about has very little to do with any church of any kind that has ever existed, except that I'm talking about human psychology and churches are expressions of human psychology.

I believe that :

1. All humans share a common soul.

2. The mind of anyone who thinks freely is an expression of that collective soul.

3. Neurosis interferes with our ability to think freely.

4. Fear of free thought arising from neurosis leads to the formation of stereotypical, inflexible thinking patterns which are not tested against data gathered from direct experience.

5. During psychosis or under the influence of psychotropic drugs, the dogmatic inflexible thinking patters break down giving glimpses of the truth.

6. If someone has always been free and spontaneous in their thinking there will be nothing "magical" about the way they think, but if they have been been restricted by neurotic blocks an encounter with the spontaneous thinking characteristic of the collective soul can be perceived as something magical like an encounter with angels or extraterrestrials. Ingesting the drug DMT (which is at times produced naturally by the human body) can bring on these experiences in anyone regardless of their belief system.

6. Received dogma and personal thinking blocks arising from personal neurosis keep us from thinking freely.

7. Wherever we come across genuinely free, spontaneous thinking we find that is part of a single vision of the nature of reality.

8. Jesus was one of many who thought freely and non-dogmatically.

9. My own life has been one of breaking free of neurosis (sometimes through psychotic breakdown) and rediscovering the ability to think freely and laterally and imaginatively.

10. I believe that my writing is an expression of a collective vision which is coming into awareness spontaneously across the global culture wherever the old dogmas have proven wanting and are breaking down, where authoritarianism is crumbling and where free and direct and uncensored communication is opening up via the internet.

11. Those who have no desire for control over themselves or others will welcome and revel in their new found freedom, but the insecure who are afraid of freedom will be angry about it for a short time.

12. It matters to me not a jot if you think this is madness.

 

 

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


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Aussiescribbler wrote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
You may not think much of the Homer's characters but when the penisula was reconstructing Hellene culture after the collapse of Mycenaea they were the very definition of what it meant to be a Greek. Hercules was an inspiration as a suffering and struggling son of god who was rewarded with becoming a god himself -- almost a direct Jesus parallel in the story concept. But you do not feel about those Greek heros as the Greeks did.

The thing about Homer's characters is that there is not a lot of dialogue from them, at least in The Odyssey, which is the only one of his poems I've read. It is dialogue that conveys character to me the most. Never-the-less the Greek myths are incredibly important to me. My essay Sucked Into Paradise talks about what the story of Odysseus and his men having to navigate the passage between the Scylla and the Charybdis means to me. It is, for me, a symbol for the central dilemma of our lives - do we run the risk of going within and perhaps being sucked down the black hole of our defining wound or do we allow our fear of that psychological black hole to drive us into external conflicts which cannot be resolved but which regenerate as fast as we can combat them.

I another place describe the style of the gospels as one might find as street performance. It mainly consists of a one-liner followed by a monolog by Jesus. That is not technically dialog. So just what are you finding in the gospels you consider to be dialog? Plato had dialog. The gospels have pretexts for monologs. As to conveying character it is not what we say but what we do. Talk the talk or walk the walk. Perhaps you simply prefer dialog but preference is personal not universal.

As for the essay, a long time ago I took a great dislike to people who did their best to make an otherwise enjoyable story into a boring exercise in finding something new to say.

Quote:
A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
The difference should be obvious. The Greek characters were part of Greek culture not part of ours. Just like today Jewish characters are not part of Christian culture even in the same city in the same country.

Characters do speak across cultures. Do you really believe there is no-one in the world today who weeps when they watch a performance of Oedipus? The great stories are deeply human stories. People in different cultures and different time periods have similar life experiences - love, sex, death, betrayal, war, ambition - these are commonalities and they are the subject of the great stories.

I agree Shakespeare is best in the original Klingon. But the emotive value of a character is not what you opened with but rather some great significance based upon the title you chose. If Mark had thrown in a love triangle and emphasized, Jesus, Lust for Glory, he might be an emotive character. But as it is he does standard street preacher tricks between ambiguous parables and common aphorisms. 

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml


A_Nony_Mouse
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Buffy rules!

Aussiescribbler wrote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
Without the cultural additions and context Jesus is as cardboard  as TV characters but to their fans including Jesus fans they are much more.

If you think Jesus is not cardboard in the gospels and assuming you have watched Buffy would you care to go one on one as to what we know about Buffy but not about Jesus? I think we can agree neither one wanted to be chosen and both were regularly called upon to exercise superhuman powers. When it comes to Jesus tell me about his family life, his relations with his friends and family, his height/weight/voice/eyes or any other personal characteristic. What was his favorite color? personality quirks? Did he even get an education or have a job skill? If you are a writer you know what cardboard means and Buffy is not cardboard. And if you were to presume Capt. Kirk were portrayed by an actor with talent the character would have been portrayed with more than calm/anger/grimace as a range of emotions and we would know more about that character than Jesus. Note calm/anger/grimace is about the emotional range of Jesus also.

I've only watched about a half an episode of Buffy. Perhaps I've been unfair on her.

I picked that as what I thought was a safe bet on familiarity. Obviously an error. What I want is a fictional construct to compare with the fictional construction Jesus a century after his purported life. I believe with the memory and the literacy of the gospels we have agreed whatever this Jesus was the gospels can only be fiction with indeterminable factual content. Which is why I cannot see why you continue. There is no way to establish what might be factual content if any.

But since you like dialog Buffy is almost all dialog. It establishes the character through her interactions with friends and family and she stands up to the Watchers and dictates to them and they comply. She is the new genre of hot chick men pretending to be feminists created.

Quote:
You seem to have a very different concept of what makes for a complex and "living" character. All you mention here is trivia. Favourite colour? Really? Character for me is almost exclusively conveyed by dialogue. Dialogue and actions. Nothing else contributes much to making a character alive for me in a fictional work. We don't know about Hamlet's childhood experiences but we don't need to, we have have is soliloquies. All we really have of Jesus is the dialogue. The action mostly consists of miracles, which I don't believe in and have no interest in. The character of Jesus, for me, is exclusively in the dialogue. Or rather, mostly, the monologues. The descriptions of his emotion are not needed.

So we have no idea what he really said or did only the portrayal a century later. What he says barely rises to the level of a father to a son going out into the world. As to emotion not needed Macbeth without emotion? The audience would walk out. The sermon on the mount given in the sing-song of a Black Baptist preacher? You would walk out.

But please tell me exactly what impresses you in what the later Greek writers put in his mouth. And also why you are interested in a person less related to Julius Caesar than Shakespeare's version. At least most of the facts in the play were straight although by what was left out events are grossly misrepresented but for dramatic effect. So a century later if there was a Jesus there was nothing changed for effect? With all of this why the focus on a person of dubious existence?

Quote:
The emotion is in the words. His words howl like a mighty storm through my imagination.

Examples please!

Quote:
And, as I've said, i have only read most of the gospels once or twice all the way through. Otherwise I pick up the Bible from time to time to find a quote to use for my writing. I really have spent almost no time in my life reading the Bible. And I'm not a religious person. I don't go to church. I spend far more time looking at pornography than I do reading about or viewing movies about religion. But the words are so powerful in me that I have no need to read them or think about them, they just pop back of their own accord. I feel like they are part of my psychological DNA.

I may never understand that. As you are a writer I do not see how you can view them as other than the storyteller's art rather than something of substance beyond the story.

Quote:
I'll try to give you the benefit of the doubt and examine the ideas of cultural context and add-ons.

A very obvious and maybe still popular cultural add-on is Jesus Christ, Superstar. But next time you read a gospel maybe find a red letter one and only read what is in red. Or try reading the sermon on the mount as literallly as any uneducated preacher might have expected an uneducated audience to like. Leave out the poetic language which could not have been there. The meek shall inherit the earth or keep your head down and you will keep your farms. Do it yourself but keep in mind it had to have been very literal and very related to everyday life.

Even the kingdom of heaven part taken in context of he and the epistles being from end times preachers and the end of the world was LITERALLY coming real soon "their's is the kingdom of heaven" was a ruling position after the end of the world order and when he literally ruled this physical earth.

Speaking of emotional content consider the cartoons of a guy in robes saying the end of the world is nigh. That is the entire new testament. Everything taught, recommended and ordered was short term because the end was coming real soon. If you do not read it in that context you are not reading it at all.

Quote:
Christianity is the dominant religion of the society in which I grew up. If I were going to be a religious person I would have almost certainly been a Christian. I never was. I did, however, attend a Catholic school for two years in order to study Latin. Maybe I felt a little superior because I didn't take religion seriously and the other boys had to be scared about their God. In religious studies I asked the Brother teaching whether someone who did good but didn't believe in God and didn't expect a reward in Heaven wasn't better than someone who was only doing it to profit by it. He admitted that I had a point. I do like Jesus movies as I've always felt a sense of identification with him. I cry during the crucifixion scene in Ben-Hur. I hated The Passion of the Christ though. The ear-reattachment miracle made me laugh. Otherwise it was essentially a religious snuff movie with an almost sexually fetishistic and voyeuristic approach to the whipping and crucifixion. I kind of wondered at the time whether the Christians who loved and were supposedly moved by the movie, on some deeper subconscious level, were "getting off" on seeing the man tortured who was the supposed reason for them living lives full of guilt and sexual repression. I've always seen Christianity as something very oppressive myself. Maybe it isn't for them.

Lots of people don't like Mel Gibson. He never seems to have realized he did not direct the Road Warrior films. But seriously, Ben Hur? I was there when it was new? Its sole claim to fame at the time was the chariot race cinematography. That should not extend to the rest of the dated genre style.

Quote:
How would this context affect my feelings about what I have read in the gospels. Well, if I were going to be charitable to myself I could say that, if Christianity was oppressing those around me, then it would be a good idea to get to the heart of it and try to break the spell that enslaved them. If I were going to be cynical I could say that if I wanted to be a rebel then the most rebellious thing I could do in this culture is to find a way to subvert Christianity and combine it with my philosophy of anarchy and sexual liberation.

I leave it for others to come to their own conclusions about my motives. But I do feel that Jesus is my imaginary friend in this enterprise. Maybe one day it will prove to have all been just one more delusion to follow on from all the others I've had in my life. Or maybe my flatmate is right and I'll end up burning in Hell. Smiling

That is a Revelation thing. Apocalyptic tracts were fairly common. Revelation is most like Judean not Christian. The whole point of them is not a threat but to tell the "suffering in an unjust world" that justice will come and they will be on top in the new world order. Back in the 19th c. tales of a coming workers' revolution were the same thing. Take from the rich and give to the poos is a micrcosm of it.

The entire message of early Christianity was exactly that. They folks on the short end of the system would wind up on top when their god returned to made the world right. Subsequent Chrisitianity is just an adaptation to "real soon" being far off and not willing to give up the rank and privlege they had accumulated.

So there was no point in pushing a years of study philosophy for the Greek gods. It was all dumbed down to what could pass muster in a year or two or maybe even next weeik.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml


A_Nony_Mouse
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Buffy rules!

Aussiescribbler wrote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
Without the cultural additions and context Jesus is as cardboard  as TV characters but to their fans including Jesus fans they are much more.

If you think Jesus is not cardboard in the gospels and assuming you have watched Buffy would you care to go one on one as to what we know about Buffy but not about Jesus? I think we can agree neither one wanted to be chosen and both were regularly called upon to exercise superhuman powers. When it comes to Jesus tell me about his family life, his relations with his friends and family, his height/weight/voice/eyes or any other personal characteristic. What was his favorite color? personality quirks? Did he even get an education or have a job skill? If you are a writer you know what cardboard means and Buffy is not cardboard. And if you were to presume Capt. Kirk were portrayed by an actor with talent the character would have been portrayed with more than calm/anger/grimace as a range of emotions and we would know more about that character than Jesus. Note calm/anger/grimace is about the emotional range of Jesus also.

I've only watched about a half an episode of Buffy. Perhaps I've been unfair on her.

I picked that as what I thought was a safe bet on familiarity. Obviously an error. What I want is a fictional construct to compare with the fictional construction Jesus a century after his purported life. I believe with the memory and the literacy of the gospels we have agreed whatever this Jesus was the gospels can only be fiction with indeterminable factual content. Which is why I cannot see why you continue. There is no way to establish what might be factual content if any.

But since you like dialog Buffy is almost all dialog. It establishes the character through her interactions with friends and family and she stands up to the Watchers and dictates to them and they comply. She is the new genre of hot chick men pretending to be feminists created.

Quote:
You seem to have a very different concept of what makes for a complex and "living" character. All you mention here is trivia. Favourite colour? Really? Character for me is almost exclusively conveyed by dialogue. Dialogue and actions. Nothing else contributes much to making a character alive for me in a fictional work. We don't know about Hamlet's childhood experiences but we don't need to, we have have is soliloquies. All we really have of Jesus is the dialogue. The action mostly consists of miracles, which I don't believe in and have no interest in. The character of Jesus, for me, is exclusively in the dialogue. Or rather, mostly, the monologues. The descriptions of his emotion are not needed.

So we have no idea what he really said or did only the portrayal a century later. What he says barely rises to the level of a father to a son going out into the world. As to emotion not needed Macbeth without emotion? The audience would walk out. The sermon on the mount given in the sing-song of a Black Baptist preacher? You would walk out.

But please tell me exactly what impresses you in what the later Greek writers put in his mouth. And also why you are interested in a person less related to Julius Caesar than Shakespeare's version. At least most of the facts in the play were straight although by what was left out events are grossly misrepresented but for dramatic effect. So a century later if there was a Jesus there was nothing changed for effect? With all of this why the focus on a person of dubious existence?

Quote:
The emotion is in the words. His words howl like a mighty storm through my imagination.

Examples please!

Quote:
And, as I've said, i have only read most of the gospels once or twice all the way through. Otherwise I pick up the Bible from time to time to find a quote to use for my writing. I really have spent almost no time in my life reading the Bible. And I'm not a religious person. I don't go to church. I spend far more time looking at pornography than I do reading about or viewing movies about religion. But the words are so powerful in me that I have no need to read them or think about them, they just pop back of their own accord. I feel like they are part of my psychological DNA.

I may never understand that. As you are a writer I do not see how you can view them as other than the storyteller's art rather than something of substance beyond the story.

Quote:
I'll try to give you the benefit of the doubt and examine the ideas of cultural context and add-ons.

A very obvious and maybe still popular cultural add-on is Jesus Christ, Superstar. But next time you read a gospel maybe find a red letter one and only read what is in red. Or try reading the sermon on the mount as literallly as any uneducated preacher might have expected an uneducated audience to like. Leave out the poetic language which could not have been there. The meek shall inherit the earth or keep your head down and you will keep your farms. Do it yourself but keep in mind it had to have been very literal and very related to everyday life.

Even the kingdom of heaven part taken in context of he and the epistles being from end times preachers and the end of the world was LITERALLY coming real soon "their's is the kingdom of heaven" was a ruling position after the end of the world order and when he literally ruled this physical earth.

Speaking of emotional content consider the cartoons of a guy in robes saying the end of the world is nigh. That is the entire new testament. Everything taught, recommended and ordered was short term because the end was coming real soon. If you do not read it in that context you are not reading it at all.

Quote:
Christianity is the dominant religion of the society in which I grew up. If I were going to be a religious person I would have almost certainly been a Christian. I never was. I did, however, attend a Catholic school for two years in order to study Latin. Maybe I felt a little superior because I didn't take religion seriously and the other boys had to be scared about their God. In religious studies I asked the Brother teaching whether someone who did good but didn't believe in God and didn't expect a reward in Heaven wasn't better than someone who was only doing it to profit by it. He admitted that I had a point. I do like Jesus movies as I've always felt a sense of identification with him. I cry during the crucifixion scene in Ben-Hur. I hated The Passion of the Christ though. The ear-reattachment miracle made me laugh. Otherwise it was essentially a religious snuff movie with an almost sexually fetishistic and voyeuristic approach to the whipping and crucifixion. I kind of wondered at the time whether the Christians who loved and were supposedly moved by the movie, on some deeper subconscious level, were "getting off" on seeing the man tortured who was the supposed reason for them living lives full of guilt and sexual repression. I've always seen Christianity as something very oppressive myself. Maybe it isn't for them.

Lots of people don't like Mel Gibson. He never seems to have realized he did not direct the Road Warrior films. But seriously, Ben Hur? I was there when it was new? Its sole claim to fame at the time was the chariot race cinematography. That should not extend to the rest of the dated genre style.

Quote:
How would this context affect my feelings about what I have read in the gospels. Well, if I were going to be charitable to myself I could say that, if Christianity was oppressing those around me, then it would be a good idea to get to the heart of it and try to break the spell that enslaved them. If I were going to be cynical I could say that if I wanted to be a rebel then the most rebellious thing I could do in this culture is to find a way to subvert Christianity and combine it with my philosophy of anarchy and sexual liberation.

I leave it for others to come to their own conclusions about my motives. But I do feel that Jesus is my imaginary friend in this enterprise. Maybe one day it will prove to have all been just one more delusion to follow on from all the others I've had in my life. Or maybe my flatmate is right and I'll end up burning in Hell. Smiling

That is a Revelation thing. Apocalyptic tracts were fairly common. Revelation is most like Judean not Christian. The whole point of them is not a threat but to tell the "suffering in an unjust world" that justice will come and they will be on top in the new world order. Back in the 19th c. tales of a coming workers' revolution were the same thing. Take from the rich and give to the poos is a micrcosm of it.

The entire message of early Christianity was exactly that. They folks on the short end of the system would wind up on top when their god returned to made the world right. Subsequent Chrisitianity is just an adaptation to "real soon" being far off and not willing to give up the rank and privlege they had accumulated.

So there was no point in pushing a years of study philosophy for the Greek gods. It was all dumbed down to what could pass muster in a year or two or maybe even next weeik.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml


A_Nony_Mouse
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philosphy and myth

Aussiescribbler wrote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

Then getting to the teachings of Jesus the most all of them are not only derivative but can be found in all cultures at all times. There is no need to consider memory for the simple and "proverbial" nature of these so-called teachings.

There is bound to be commonality across cultures. Wisdom is the same regardless of culture, otherwise it would not be wisdom but mere opinion. Myths also have great similarity across cultures, even cultures which had no contact with each other. Meaningful patterns in one culture are liable to be meaningful patterns in other cultures as well. However I see a consistent philosophy in what I have read of the words attributed to Jesus which I have not come across elsewhere. This doesn't mean that it isn't out there. I do very little reading really.

Not having had contact is a risky thing. All Aryan language peoples, Indo-European if you hate Nazis, have the same god system going back to the earliest written records. We can trace Inana to Ishtar to Ashare to Aphrodite with very little difference other than the local name.

As to philosophy, W. Bush raised the nonsense claim that Jesus was a great philosopher and at least three parodies of that appeared. None were memorable as paradoies but they did make the point. So we might quite reasonably reduce that to attitude towards life. But then you have said you can only view it as consistent if you ignore what is not consistent with what you want to read. So you cannot say it is consistent rather only that you can find a number of items which appear consistent to you and then only because of your selection process. Anybody can do that. It says nothing about the source material.

Quote:
A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
Next ALL gospels are of equal merit and value as are all the contents of each.

This may be your opinion but I see no more reason to say this than to say that all Shakespeare's plays are of equal merit and all parts of each play are of equal merit.

It is not my opinion. In the sense I used it it is the same as saying all of Shakespeare's plays are by Shakespeare.

It is a fact that the things called gospels are defined as describing the life of Jesus. That is the only criteria. As there is no way any of them can be actual descriptions because they appear to late there is nothing to distinguish them from each other as to their content. Despite conflicting content there is no way to determine which content is correct -- if any of course. As all were written after any pretense of factual knowledge was long passed all later creation is indistinguishable from recitation of fact.

You method of threading through them to create a selection of pieces consistent with a message you like it called arguing to a conclusion. Anyone can do that.

Quote:
A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
Picking and choosing negates any value to any gospel as a whole. In other words, if you are going to pick and choose things withing the 30+ gospels then there is no rational reason to limit oneself to gospels. And if one agrees one can find ideas one likes in sources other than gospels why would one put gospels into a separate category simply because they have a guy named Jesus as a central character? If one picks and chooses regardless of attribution to the central character what is the point of the central character?

I don't  put gospels into a separate category. I take my inspiration and ideas where I can find them. There are things I've read in Keith Johnstone's Impro : Improvisation and the Theatre, the works of William Blake, Oscar Wilde, Carl Jung, R. D. Laing and Wilhelm Reich which are just as valuable to me as anything I've read in the gospels. And there are some things I've read in the gospels that are valueless to me. Who cares about Jesus' family tree?

The point of the central character is only that he provides a point of reference for the philosophy being expressed. I could read a bunch of random unidentified quotes which, unbeknownst to myself, were from R. D. Laing and I might find them insightful, but I would have to know they were from the same person to see that they were supposed to be integrated into a consistent philosophy of how social interactions effect consciousness.

That sounds to me like you are pursuing a methodology which has resulted in two or three different approaches every generation since as far back as there are records of such things and which has gotten us no where. At times I have been come across the repetition of such ideas centuries apart in slightly different form. There comes a point where a rational person decides a non-productive methodology like astrology or alchemy is a waste of time no matter how attractive.

You do appear to be pursuing an unproductive methodolgy.

 

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml


Aussiescribbler
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A_Nony_Mouse wrote:I another

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
I another place describe the style of the gospels as one might find as street performance. It mainly consists of a one-liner followed by a monolog by Jesus. That is not technically dialog. So just what are you finding in the gospels you consider to be dialog? Plato had dialog. The gospels have pretexts for monologs. As to conveying character it is not what we say but what we do. Talk the talk or walk the walk. Perhaps you simply prefer dialog but preference is personal not universal.

I admitted that they were mostly monologues. But people (real or fictional) speak to me in words. I feel that Oscar Wilde, William Blake, George Bernard Shaw, W. Somerset Maugham, William Shakespeare, etc., etc., are among my best friends. I know these people and appreciate their character because I have read their words. I feel the same way about Jesus, be he a fictional character or a historical one. It is the words which speak to me. I can't see Jesus' actions. If he was real and I had lived in his time and place I could have seen them. I didn't. As you've pointed out the descriptions in the gospels are minimal. And most of them deal with the performance of miracles I don't believe in anyway. I know the accounts of the "miracles" are important for you, because they help you support your complete rejection strategy. But, unlike you, I just don't care about them one way or the other.

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
As for the essay, a long time ago I took a great dislike to people who did their best to make an otherwise enjoyable story into a boring exercise in finding something new to say.

What a person takes a dislike to can tell us a good deal about them. It may not be true of you, but I believe that some who have no patience with the quest to find a deeper meaning in things have this lack of patience because they want to believe that everyone is as superficial in their thinking or their emotional or sensual experience of life as they are themselves. But I am not recommending the essay to you, only using it as evidence that the words attributed to Jesus are only one small part of culture to which I look in search of deeper insight into what it means to be human.

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
I agree Shakespeare is best in the original Klingon. But the emotive value of a character is not what you opened with but rather some great significance based upon the title you chose. If Mark had thrown in a love triangle and emphasized, Jesus, Lust for Glory, he might be an emotive character. But as it is he does standard street preacher tricks between ambiguous parables and common aphorisms.

So you are saying that if Jesus had been an egomaniac you would have been able to identify with him emotionally?

This may be a simple matter of differing tastes. I find that many people are very keen on these epic fantasy novels about clashing kings and royal plots. I loved Lord of the Rings, but other than that these kinds of stories seem completely uninteresting to me. Since I'm an anarchist, how can I be interested in one authoritarian plotting against another authoritarian? But give me a picaresque trash novel about a horny window cleaner being seduced by sex mad house wives and I can really enjoy it as I can identify with the character. The Jesus character is talking about something that doesn't interest you, so you get bored and turn off and it is all just "blah blah blah bring a sword blah blah blah cut of your hand if it offend thee blah blah blah I am the way blah blah blah". All you hear is something that fits your pre-made decision to reject it as deluded and/or bogus and/or destructive.

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


Aussiescribbler
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A_Nony_Mouse wrote: I

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
 I picked that as what I thought was a safe bet on familiarity. Obviously an error. What I want is a fictional construct to compare with the fictional construction Jesus a century after his purported life. I believe with the memory and the literacy of the gospels we have agreed whatever this Jesus was the gospels can only be fiction with indeterminable factual content. Which is why I cannot see why you continue. There is no way to establish what might be factual content if any.

I think we are talking in circles here. The reason I continue is because I believe that we are "sinners" (i.e. selfish, i.e. neurotic) and that "The Kingdom of Heaven" (naked reality) is all around us and within us, and that it is our "state of sin" (neurosis and resultant inability to think honestly) which keeps us alienated from it. I believe that it is better to "store up treasures in heaven" (learn to live in the bliss of naked reality in loving community with others) than to place so much importance on the accumulation of material goods which bring us worries which distract us from the bliss of naked reality and love. That if we don't judge others we will not come to a time where we look in the mirror and have to face the fact that we are just like them in some crucial sense. I believe that love is a manifestation of "God" (the creative principle of the universe) and that anything shared, such as bread and wine, is the very body of "God" (love). I believe that children are still living in "The Kingdom of Heaven" (naked reality) and that "the wise and learned" (most intellectuals) are alienated from naked reality and are "blind guides", pretending to be experts when their thinking is actually essentially unsound because of the fracturing effect of their neurosis. I believe that those who "gain the world" (achieve worldly success) are liable to "lose their soul" as they will probably no longer be able to interact with others as equal, a pre-requisite for both love and living in the bliss of naked reality. And I believe that we are in the "end times" (a time when humanity's neurosis has reach the point of inevitable collapse) and that "the abomination that causes desolation" (idealism) has been place in the "holy place". Idealism is the root source of human evil, but it has, in our value systems, been put in the place of that which is "holy" (complete). Idealism splits the world into good and evil, thus it is the source of dualism. The "holy" attitude loves evil just as much as it loves good, because love (or acceptance) causes that which is destructive or unhealthy in the social system to decrease and that which is healthy to increase. To not love evil but rather to fight against evil perpetuates evil, in the same way that fighting against measles by scratching them keeps them from healing. This is why it is best to "love your enemies". I could go on and on. The point is that this is a world view which is so taboo to the dualistic world that it appears only, as far as I'm aware, in parables and metaphors in mythology or religion. This is why Jesus' words, whether fictional or real, mean so much to me. Those of us who have this view of the world have always had to be loners. There has always been someone to preach morals, and occasionally there has been someone like the Marquis de Sade or Anton Le Vey to preach immorality, but for this kind of approach there is Jesus, Blake and Jung. There are probably others, but there are no churches or clubs for people who view the world this way.

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
So we have no idea what he really said or did only the portrayal a century later. What he says barely rises to the level of a father to a son going out into the world. As to emotion not needed Macbeth without emotion? The audience would walk out. The sermon on the mount given in the sing-song of a Black Baptist preacher? You would walk out.

What I mean is that descriptions of Jesus emotional state are not necessary. I can deduce his emotional state from the words and supply it myself, just as I would if reading Macbeth. Shakespeare doesn't say "Macbeth feels terrified at the sight of the marching army of trees." We can take that as read.

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
Quote:
The emotion is in the words. His words howl like a mighty storm through my imagination.

Examples please!

I've set myself up here a bit by talking about a mighty storm. I'll go for some which are storm-like and others which have have a life of their own in my imagination.

"You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks." Matthew 12:34 NIV

"Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather." Matthew 24:28

"Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." Mark 1:17 (This may seem a strange on to include, but it has always been very personal to me.)

"He told them, 'The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, "they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!" Mark 4:12

"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 (Showing that terms used in his speech are meant to be taken metaphorically, not literally.)

"His disciples questioned Him and said to Him, 'Do you want us to fast? How shall we pray? Shall we give alms? What diet shall we observe?" Jesus said, 'Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered'." Thomas 6

"Jesus said, 'Whoever believes that the All itself is deficient is (himself) completely deficient." Thomas 67 (Those who reject holism.)

"Jesus said, 'If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." Thomas 70

"Jesus said, "When you make the two one, you will become sons of man, and when you say, 'Mountain, move away,' it will move away." Thomas 106 (The need to overcome dualism.)

"Jesus said, 'If those who attract you say, "See, the Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is under the earth,' then the fish of the sea will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is outside of you. [Those who] become acquainted with [themselves] will find it; [and when you] become acquainted with yourselves, [you will understand that] it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty." Thomas fragments 3 (This shows that the Kingdom of Heaven is a metaphor for a state of mind achieved through self-knowledge.)

You say that there is nothing here which cannot it be found elsewhere. Perhaps you would like to produce some quotes from other earlier writers which say the same thing as any of these.

Quote:
And, as I've said, i have only read most of the gospels once or twice all the way through. Otherwise I pick up the Bible from time to time to find a quote to use for my writing. I really have spent almost no time in my life reading the Bible. And I'm not a religious person. I don't go to church. I spend far more time looking at pornography than I do reading about or viewing movies about religion. But the words are so powerful in me that I have no need to read them or think about them, they just pop back of their own accord. I feel like they are part of my psychological DNA.

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
I may never understand that. As you are a writer I do not see how you can view them as other than the storyteller's art rather than something of substance beyond the story.

Perhaps it is because I am a writer. Even when I'm writing smutty sex stories I feel that they don't come from me but rather through me. I don't write them so much as they write me. I open up to the world of the imagination and it makes of me what it will.

I express my view on writing and ideas in this passage of my book :

Why Joe Blow?

Joe Blow is a name used for someone who is nobody special. This is a appropriate pseudonym for me to use because it emphasises that I take no credit for any useful ideas or insights that might be contained in this work.

Nobody creates ideas or truths. They simply exist. We either see them or we don't. And the fact that we may see them is not a sign of strength or achievement on our part. It takes an act of will to maintain a delusion, to cling to a belief in spite of contrary evidence. But when we have useful ideas or discover truths it is often because we lack the will or the ability to protect ourselves against them.

I've never had a very effective ego, hence my history of depression and psychosis. I'm not a brave individual. I wouldn't have gone to those frightening places if I had known how not to.

I'm only moderately intelligent. And also only moderately well-read.

I haven't put much effort into any of this, beyond the effort we all put into keeping ourselves afloat emotionally.

So, to the extent that these ideas may be useful, it is a quality of the ideas themselves alone, and has nothing to do with the individual who gives expression to them. No doubt at this very moment many other individuals are expressing similar ideas, as any of us might if we learn to relax and be simply who we are and not who we think we should be.

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
A very obvious and maybe still popular cultural add-on is Jesus Christ, Superstar. But next time you read a gospel maybe find a red letter one and only read what is in red. Or try reading the sermon on the mount as literallly as any uneducated preacher might have expected an uneducated audience to like. Leave out the poetic language which could not have been there. The meek shall inherit the earth or keep your head down and you will keep your farms. Do it yourself but keep in mind it had to have been very literal and very related to everyday life.

I could, but I'm really not that interested in spending much time reading the Bible. Even getting the quotes above I just hunted around the internet and included some I didn't even remember. Basically I have a vision of what I think Jesus was talking about and when I'm doing some writing I find a few quotes and use them. I'm not someone who wants to make a study of these things. The details me nothing to me. The only reason I write about things that Jesus said is because I think that people might be interested in the fact that my psychological theories make possible a non-supernatural interpretation of some of the things Jesus is reputed to have said. This is just added to the fact that the theory I have enables me to give me explanations for why women have been oppressed historically, why different people have different sexual orientations, why there is conflict between humans, etc., etc. If one has a theory one wants to demonstrate its explanatory power. But I don't have the time or interest in looking into all of these phenomena in detail. I'll leave that to people whose speciality it is. I stick mainly to my own field of interest, which is psychological exploration through introspection.

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
Lots of people don't like Mel Gibson. He never seems to have realized he did not direct the Road Warrior films. But seriously, Ben Hur? I was there when it was new? Its sole claim to fame at the time was the chariot race cinematography. That should not extend to the rest of the dated genre style.

I like all kinds of movies, including old-fashioned ones. And if something moves me then that is what matters. Why should what other people think of a movie effect my appreciation of it? Sometimes that happens the other way. There are some movies I try very hard to like because I've been told they are masterpieces. But if I like something that is good enough for me.

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
That is a Revelation thing. Apocalyptic tracts were fairly common. Revelation is most like Judean not Christian. The whole point of them is not a threat but to tell the "suffering in an unjust world" that justice will come and they will be on top in the new world order. Back in the 19th c. tales of a coming workers' revolution were the same thing. Take from the rich and give to the poos is a micrcosm of it.

The entire message of early Christianity was exactly that. They folks on the short end of the system would wind up on top when their god returned to made the world right. Subsequent Chrisitianity is just an adaptation to "real soon" being far off and not willing to give up the rank and privlege they had accumulated.

So there was no point in pushing a years of study philosophy for the Greek gods. It was all dumbed down to what could pass muster in a year or two or maybe even next week.

Yes, I know that those who have talked about the apocalypse have always underestimated how long it would take to arrive. My next essay in my Deciphering the Jesus Fairytale series will be on the concept of the apocalypse. Clearly I don't see it as something supernatural. Nor do I see it as some kind of karma thing - the good will get their rewards and the bad will be punished. I'm planning to link it to two other concepts - Plato's cave analogy and the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. My view is that it is a metaphorical acknowledgement that psychologically we don't live in the real world, but rather view the real world through the fracturing filter of our theoretical abstractions - in other words we remake the world in our minds to fit the prejudices determined by our neurosis (i.e. we are separated from the real world by our character armour which dulls our senses, disturbs our emotions and confuses our thinking. This leads to a world built around unfounded beliefs which support a hierarchical system which can only be maintained as long as those unfounded beliefs are maintained by the conformity of an insecure populace who are afraid to think independently. A king can only rule over his populace if they have been conned into believing he is God's representative on earth or whatever. If everyone were to suddenly realise that he is just a man no different from them, he would lose all of his power. Similarly we may think that some university professor who applies the selfish gene theory to human behaviour and claims that we like to wear fashionable clothes not to boost our fragile neurotic egos but because it will increase our breeding opportunities deserves our respect just because he has a university degree. But were we to realise that many intellectuals are just bullshit artists skilled at manipulating facts to support whatever theory makes them feel most secure about their own fucked up state, then we would just laugh at this guy and say : "Well the Pope has some pretty fancy threads but they don't seem to be helping him to pull the chicks." This is where the story of the Emperor's New Clothes comes in. When all the false ideas that support the authorities and power structures of our society are undermined by the insights which arise from the holistic worldview, insights which can be understood with little education and which can be transmitted even just as an attitude of lack of respect for authority even among those who may not grasp the full meaning of the insights, then those who have lived by lies and the oppression of others will be exposed before the world and have nowhere to hide there lost dignity. This doesn't mean there would be any revenge taken on these people as everyone will be too busy enjoying a life of freedom for a change.

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


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A_Nony_Mouse wrote: That

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
 That sounds to me like you are pursuing a methodology which has resulted in two or three different approaches every generation since as far back as there are records of such things and which has gotten us no where. At times I have been come across the repetition of such ideas centuries apart in slightly different form. There comes a point where a rational person decides a non-productive methodology like astrology or alchemy is a waste of time no matter how attractive.

You do appear to be pursuing an unproductive methodology. 

My methodology has been productive so far and as long as it continues to be productive I'll keep going with it. My methodology has produced five years without any mental illness for me and a book which has been widely praised and which people regularly tell me has changed their lives for the better. It also has given me a simple explanation for human psychology more accountable and applicable than any I have come across anywhere else. What has your methodology produced?

 

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

Joe Blow - How to Be Free


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If the worlds problems

Aussiescribbler wrote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
 Again I must refer to real history. At the time of the events I referred to and for centuries afterwards there was only one empire and one church. There was no split between Constantinople and Rome at that time. It was all the same church. The kinds of things I mentioned occurred as commonly and as readily in Rome and Egypt as in Byzantium and all with the same approval of both church and state which were still one. 

 

What I'm talking about has very little to do with any church of any kind that has ever existed, except that I'm talking about human psychology and churches are expressions of human psychology.

I believe that :

1. All humans share a common soul.

2. The mind of anyone who thinks freely is an expression of that collective soul.

3. Neurosis interferes with our ability to think freely.

4. Fear of free thought arising from neurosis leads to the formation of stereotypical, inflexible thinking patterns which are not tested against data gathered from direct experience.

5. During psychosis or under the influence of psychotropic drugs, the dogmatic inflexible thinking patters break down giving glimpses of the truth.

6. If someone has always been free and spontaneous in their thinking there will be nothing "magical" about the way they think, but if they have been been restricted by neurotic blocks an encounter with the spontaneous thinking characteristic of the collective soul can be perceived as something magical like an encounter with angels or extraterrestrials. Ingesting the drug DMT (which is at times produced naturally by the human body) can bring on these experiences in anyone regardless of their belief system.

6. Received dogma and personal thinking blocks arising from personal neurosis keep us from thinking freely.

7. Wherever we come across genuinely free, spontaneous thinking we find that is part of a single vision of the nature of reality.

8. Jesus was one of many who thought freely and non-dogmatically.

9. My own life has been one of breaking free of neurosis (sometimes through psychotic breakdown) and rediscovering the ability to think freely and laterally and imaginatively.

10. I believe that my writing is an expression of a collective vision which is coming into awareness spontaneously across the global culture wherever the old dogmas have proven wanting and are breaking down, where authoritarianism is crumbling and where free and direct and uncensored communication is opening up via the internet.

11. Those who have no desire for control over themselves or others will welcome and revel in their new found freedom, but the insecure who are afraid of freedom will be angry about it for a short time.

12. It matters to me not a jot if you think this is madness.

are to be solved it's must take free thought. If Atheism or anything else doesn't solve the problem it's not free thought. I agree- the problem is restricted mentality owned by those in the ivory towers. They confiscate the child, form it to their purpose in a mental box of theiur making, getting all to believe "they" are the righteous, only they have the key to proper social construction, operate the box by force or coercion, cause  the historical repetition of failure, and maintain the process of final decision via smoke and mirrors, override the natural person and create economic personalities. There's more to free thinking then the right to decide there's a god or no god. That's merely one thing in a repituar of many things. You're absolutely correct -JC is a free thinker and deviate of authority. IE---you must hate your mother etc. That's not one's biological mother, it's the mother of harlots seen in Rev. Who's the mother of the "mind" is what to consider, not the body. JC is about the inner not the outer. I posted months ago that it's people like our group that are the free thinkers. Going by Euro trash here is preferred to decide right and wrong. The Euros are dead wrong in their knowledge and understanding of the book. What we,re seeing here is such intense opposition that any other point of view is over ridden by the drive to be right and every other is unacceptable. That's not free thinking by any measure.

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Aussiescribbler wrote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
I another place describe the style of the gospels as one might find as street performance. It mainly consists of a one-liner followed by a monolog by Jesus. That is not technically dialog. So just what are you finding in the gospels you consider to be dialog? Plato had dialog. The gospels have pretexts for monologs. As to conveying character it is not what we say but what we do. Talk the talk or walk the walk. Perhaps you simply prefer dialog but preference is personal not universal.

I admitted that they were mostly monologues. But people (real or fictional) speak to me in words. I feel that Oscar Wilde, William Blake, George Bernard Shaw, W. Somerset Maugham, William Shakespeare, etc., etc., are among my best friends. I know these people and appreciate their character because I have read their words. I feel the same way about Jesus, be he a fictional character or a historical one. It is the words which speak to me. I can't see Jesus' actions. If he was real and I had lived in his time and place I could have seen them. I didn't. As you've pointed out the descriptions in the gospels are minimal. And most of them deal with the performance of miracles I don't believe in anyway. I know the accounts of the "miracles" are important for you, because they help you support your complete rejection strategy. But, unlike you, I just don't care about them one way or the other.

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
As for the essay, a long time ago I took a great dislike to people who did their best to make an otherwise enjoyable story into a boring exercise in finding something new to say.

What a person takes a dislike to can tell us a good deal about them. It may not be true of you, but I believe that some who have no patience with the quest to find a deeper meaning in things have this lack of patience because they want to believe that everyone is as superficial in their thinking or their emotional or sensual experience of life as they are themselves. But I am not recommending the essay to you, only using it as evidence that the words attributed to Jesus are only one small part of culture to which I look in search of deeper insight into what it means to be human.

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
I agree Shakespeare is best in the original Klingon. But the emotive value of a character is not what you opened with but rather some great significance based upon the title you chose. If Mark had thrown in a love triangle and emphasized, Jesus, Lust for Glory, he might be an emotive character. But as it is he does standard street preacher tricks between ambiguous parables and common aphorisms.

So you are saying that if Jesus had been an egomaniac you would have been able to identify with him emotionally?

This may be a simple matter of differing tastes. I find that many people are very keen on these epic fantasy novels about clashing kings and royal plots. I loved Lord of the Rings, but other than that these kinds of stories seem completely uninteresting to me. Since I'm an anarchist, how can I be interested in one authoritarian plotting against another authoritarian? But give me a picaresque trash novel about a horny window cleaner being seduced by sex mad house wives and I can really enjoy it as I can identify with the character. The Jesus character is talking about something that doesn't interest you, so you get bored and turn off and it is all just "blah blah blah bring a sword blah blah blah cut of your hand if it offend thee blah blah blah I am the way blah blah blah". All you hear is something that fits your pre-made decision to reject it as deluded and/or bogus and/or destructive.

You've detected the circular thinking. Welcome to a problem.

However. I couldn't find you post right off (and do to shear laziness also) relating to you understanding of the self. This is another where we are parallel. We derive the "religion" of the self (so to speak/and amounts to nothing more then the belief in "the self') from the understanding of Adam. Adam , a multiple (the spiritual oneness) is an understanding of the self. If I recall you stated that you could be taken for a theist and Atheist---it's the same here. He/they sat together and figured themselves out, which is the process you see in creation, as we see it to be. They have no, nor did they develop any concept of God. There was no need to. The best we could do in translating "Yahweh" is - "that which is", "The I am", The I am that I am", "That which is me". This is all a matter of "the self" You've noticed I have the label of "theist" on the forum which can't apply. In Adam there's no theism at work anywhere or how. Adam is a comprehension of the "self". This was the knowledge that prevails until the arrival of Nimrod. Nimrod institutes the "civil self" negating Adam. This is the fall. The government then determines what one is in----Behold. we have become as Nimrod a mighty hunter before the lord. What this is -is everyone recognizing they were duped into becoming as Nimrod, which is the precise goal of any civil government---to make all as themselves but forcing the belief that they are the moral betters, and herd everyone into thier ideas .Before this they were free on the land, everyone to their own house and land. "Hunter" in this case denotes "predator" which it's counter part in creation is the Creeping thing--Catlike, slinky meaning deception, and can also relate to snake-like. This is when a predator class becomes established as the higher uppers livine off the carcases of the public and to lazy to run their own farm so to speak. This is where we determined the self from.
 

 

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Old Seer wrote:However. I

Old Seer wrote:

However. I couldn't find you post right off (and do to shear laziness also) relating to you understanding of the self. This is another where we are parallel. We derive the "religion" of the self (so to speak/and amounts to nothing more then the belief in "the self') from the understanding of Adam. Adam , a multiple (the spiritual oneness) is an understanding of the self. If I recall you stated that you could be taken for a theist and Atheist---it's the same here. He/they sat together and figured themselves out, which is the process you see in creation, as we see it to be. They have no, nor did they develop any concept of God. There was no need to. The best we could do in translating "Yahweh" is - "that which is", "The I am", The I am that I am", "That which is me". This is all a matter of "the self" You've noticed I have the label of "theist" on the forum which can't apply. In Adam there's no theism at work anywhere or how. Adam is a comprehension of the "self". This was the knowledge that prevails until the arrival of Nimrod. Nimrod institutes the "civil self" negating Adam. This is the fall. The government then determines what one is in----Behold. we have become as Nimrod a mighty hunter before the lord. What this is -is everyone recognizing they were duped into becoming as Nimrod, which is the precise goal of any civil government---to make all as themselves but forcing the belief that they are the moral betters, and herd everyone into thier ideas .Before this they were free on the land, everyone to their own house and land. "Hunter" in this case denotes "predator" which it's counter part in creation is the Creeping thing--Catlike, slinky meaning deception, and can also relate to snake-like. This is when a predator class becomes established as the higher uppers livine off the carcases of the public and to lazy to run their own farm so to speak. This is where we determined the self from.

Wow! You've convinced me I must read Genesis. What you are saying here fits perfectly with the story I give of the origins of the human neurosis and civilisation (i.e. repression) and the role of the invention of hunting in that process. I can't wait to hear what you have to say about this part of How to Be Free when you have read it.

"Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place."

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Yes.

Aussiescribbler wrote:

Old Seer wrote:

However. I couldn't find you post right off (and do to shear laziness also) relating to you understanding of the self. This is another where we are parallel. We derive the "religion" of the self (so to speak/and amounts to nothing more then the belief in "the self') from the understanding of Adam. Adam , a multiple (the spiritual oneness) is an understanding of the self. If I recall you stated that you could be taken for a theist and Atheist---it's the same here. He/they sat together and figured themselves out, which is the process you see in creation, as we see it to be. They have no, nor did they develop any concept of God. There was no need to. The best we could do in translating "Yahweh" is - "that which is", "The I am", The I am that I am", "That which is me". This is all a matter of "the self" You've noticed I have the label of "theist" on the forum which can't apply. In Adam there's no theism at work anywhere or how. Adam is a comprehension of the "self". This was the knowledge that prevails until the arrival of Nimrod. Nimrod institutes the "civil self" negating Adam. This is the fall. The government then determines what one is in----Behold. we have become as Nimrod a mighty hunter before the lord. What this is -is everyone recognizing they were duped into becoming as Nimrod, which is the precise goal of any civil government---to make all as themselves but forcing the belief that they are the moral betters, and herd everyone into thier ideas .Before this they were free on the land, everyone to their own house and land. "Hunter" in this case denotes "predator" which it's counter part in creation is the Creeping thing--Catlike, slinky meaning deception, and can also relate to snake-like. This is when a predator class becomes established as the higher uppers livine off the carcases of the public and to lazy to run their own farm so to speak. This is where we determined the self from.

Wow! You've convinced me I must read Genesis. What you are saying here fits perfectly with the story I give of the origins of the human neurosis and civilisation (i.e. repression) and the role of the invention of hunting in that process. I can't wait to hear what you have to say about this part of How to Be Free when you have read it.

We agree. I'm not a psycho dude but even if so I have to use commoner words. People wouldn't necessarily understand if I were to use Psychology terms---which I can't do anyway. So for me it's mental state or mentality etc. The entire book centers on creation and it's

symbols/metaphors. You'll notice the use of the terms all through the book, even in the NT. Civilization is always ( in almost all cultures) is signified by animal images. JC is Adam +, as Christianity is an improvement over Adam, and both mental states are the same.The civil mind is your neurosis application which is brought about by civil forces. I recognized it right off. 

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Aussiescribbler wrote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
 You have a real problem here. The epistles precede the gospels by every way to look at them. Acts is a much later creation around the time of the gospes which cannot be reconciled with the epistles. Frankly if you have not read them you have no idea of Christianity from its source material. You may have tons of crap laid on top of them but like the cardboard Jesus they are no more than what they read without tons of later subtle interpretation which is not in the original. For example in Acts it is written the Paul learned all there was to know about Jesus. In one of his letters he claims the same thing. In another letter he does not know about the "miracle" of no unclean food.

I might read them some day, but I just don't think Paul would appeal to me much. I was interested to read in Bart D. Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted that some of the letters with Paul's name on them are forgeries by later writers.

For what it is worth linguistic analysis indicates the five longest letters were written by the same person. Within the limits of that analysis that is the only thing that can be said for certain about them. Note the only confidence is the same person not that that person in Paul. There is nothing indicating later in the rest simply not the same person.

Quote:
As you may have noticed I'm not much on research. Skim a book here. Grab something off Wikipedia there. That's good enough for me. Big conclusions from virtually no evidence is my speciality. What matters to me most is my own understanding of human psychology, everything else is just window dressing.

Compared to people who are seriously into this I barely qualify as a researcher. What I am saying is like several decades of looking into the impossibly good claims believers make. As to your specialty I read lots of big conclusions contrary to the evidence. As I believe I have said, anyone can pick and choose and argue to any conclusion they wish. That does not need any particular source to accomplish. You do not need gospels to do it. Most anything will do.

Quote:
A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
The problem here is understanding as in later explanation is BS. There is NO stated reason on record, period. But if that emphasis were correct what is the point of rejection? The people in charge in those days were no different from the ignorant assholes in charge today.

If the church was essentially authoritarian then any gospels with a clearly anarchistic bias would not meet with their approval. But I think the only apocryphal gospel I've read is The Gospel of Thomas. I don't know if the anarchistic tendency was more obvious in any of the others than it is in the canonical gospels.

My friend, the churches love anachronisms. The best anachronisms they have a special name for. They call them prophesies. The whole idea of the crucifixion being sacrifice for sin does not appear until well after the Council of Nicaea. And before it was a sacrifice there was no need for priests and (no) surprise there are no priests until well after that council. One of these days I'll get around to digging into enough enough to see exactly when it happened. I have been over roughly the material and no surprise the change is not spelled out or denied but it is in the literature. Anyway to hear they talk about it, it was considered a sacrifice for sin from the very beginning even though all the early stuff says clearly it was just a group meal. The Sunday afternoon picnic is more like the original.

Quote:
A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
Are you thinking this through or just bullshitting yourself?

I never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

May make a good novel some day but why talk about it here?

 

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

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Old Seer wrote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

RobbyPants wrote:

Brian37 wrote:
Your views, so? All you are saying is that Jesus said some pretty stuff you like. SO WHAT.

You cherry pick the bible which is full of nasty stories, even if "metaphor" which is a cop out because you water them down to be  metaphor and take the pretty stories and focus on those. EVERYONE DOES THAT.

I'm curious if anyone has published a book where they do the opposite. Take all the terrible stories, assume they're true, and use that as the basis for which portions you cherry pick, leaving all the "nice" stories of love and compassion as metaphor.

I mean, really, that approach is equally valid as the opposite; it just leaves the terrible nature of god much more obviously apparent. I think that's what I'm going to do the next time someone tells me which parts are true and which are metaphors. I'll just correct them and tell them they have it exactly backward.

Or take a look at ancient mythology and ask how intelligent people could have taken it seriously and assume they used the same method of writing off the dumb parts as metaphor. They could then postulate what Hercules really did instead of the labors and take it all as metaphor of striving for excellance.

Either way it is arguing to a preconceived conclusion. Any of us, even I, could be here to save the human race from itself if our chroniclers only wrote about the two or three good parts of our lives.

the confines of good and evil. It is life.

Good and evil are abstract nouns. It is as dumb to take them as real things as it is to elevate the abstract noun of soul to a real thing.

 

 

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml


A_Nony_Mouse
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Aussiescribbler wrote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
Lets first start with all that being long discarded Jungian and Freudian cult gibberish. That is how they ran their psychoanalysis con that L. Ron Hubbard copied.

Fools may have discarded Jung and Freud. I have not. I view this throwing of a bold exploration of depth psychology onto the garbage heap as an act of cowardice by increasingly insecure intellectuals who are suffering from what R. D. Laing called "psychophobia" (i.e. fear of one's own mind).

Most people saw the con game and never took them seriously. They never cured anyone. Talk your way to mental health is a known con.

Serious research has established the ideas they expounded have no basis in the way the mind works. You may call it bold exploration but if it does not work it is wrong for the same reasons alchemy is wrong despite the gibberish philosophy often associated with it. Their ideas are sterile and lead no place but do permit an astounding amount of mental masturbatory gibberish to be spouted and sound profound.

So while the con artists go on and on about conflict between the id and ego and superego these conflicts are directly related to chemical imbalance in the brain and the conflicts go away when the balance is restored. So one may have a deep and profound philosophy on the relation of humors to disease penicillin works shitcans the profound philosophy. So also with Freud, Jung, Adler and the like.

They were all crooks and con artists selling talk your way to mental health at $100/hr and up just like all the rest of the hucksters around today including the Scientologists.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml


A_Nony_Mouse
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Aussiescribbler wrote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:
Or take a look at ancient mythology and ask how intelligent people could have taken it seriously and assume they used the same method of writing off the dumb parts as metaphor. They could then postulate what Hercules really did instead of the labors and take it all as metaphor of striving for excellance.

Either way it is arguing to a preconceived conclusion. Any of us, even I, could be here to save the human race from itself if our chroniclers only wrote about the two or three good parts of our lives.

How do we really know what percentage of ancient Greeks took the stories of the gods as parables rather than literal descriptions of real events?

It seems to me that arguing to preconceived conclusions is something you know a lot about.

The god stories were entertainment. Mythology was as entertaining to them as it is to us when Hollywood gets it right. So were the gospels in the beginning. Christians invented dogma, absolute truth, and today we falsely assume the stories of the other gods were also taken as dogma. All the evidence is to the contrary. Up until a couple centuries ago Jews were still creating "biblical" stories. The issue of the stories being literally true did not arise. For the ancients the quality of the stories was the only thing that mattered.

Far from being preconceived this is simply rejecting modern ideas and looking at how people dealt with their god stories. You can find plenty of comments on stories being worthy of the gods but none regarding true in our sense as the opposite of false. They had many mutually exclusive stories about the same gods and events and it did not bother them in the least. At most you find a casual remark like 'whereas in Cappodocia X does Y instead'. Such an observation about others holding the nature of Jesus being different in another city would be followed by a mention of heresy and perhaps extermination.

 

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml


A_Nony_Mouse
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Aussiescribbler wrote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

Lets first start with all that being long discarded Jungian and Freudian cult gibberish. That is how they ran their psychoanalysis con that L. Ron Hubbard copied.

This is a common dialectical confidence trick. Try to discredit something genuine by associating it with a fraudulent imitation.

You have suggested that I do my research on the history of religion. Perhaps you should do some research into the history of psychoanalysis and the talking cure and those whose lives have been benefited or even been saved by it. I'm one of them. As I explained above when someone was worried that I might not be receiving care from a professional psychiatrist. I am and she has Freud's books on her shelf. She uses medication and the talking therapy which has grown out of the approach developed by Freud.

Sorry but no cures by talking one's way to mental health are on record beyond those which are self-reported and cannot be substantiated. Psycholanalyts don't seem to want to participate in double-blind tests. But the drugs are proven efficacious in double blind tests.

Drugs alone work. Is it surprising that drugs plus talk also works? In fact take away the talking and the drugs still work.

Before these drugs came along the asylums were full and the con artists were talking to the inmates. The drugs came along and the asylums were mostly sold off for real estate development.

But if you like self-reported e-meters and readings end mental problems for Scientologists. Just ask then and those who do the readings and the clears who swear by it.

For the record Freud "sold" his approach with a book giving a detailed account of three cures. Later analysis found every case was grossly misrepresented to the point of professional fraud beyond the pale of any excuse. And he was an MD so it should have been grounds for loss of license. If it had really worked the fraud would not have been necessary.

 

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

www.ussliberty.org

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html

www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml