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WBraun
climber
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Oct 24, 2009 - 08:20pm PT
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Heaven, the upper planetary systems in the Universe are not for ever.
The lifetime is much much longer than here on earth but when your time is up there you will be sent back to earth.
Heaven is not in the spiritual world, it is still material.
Sorry ........
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dave goodwin
climber
carson city, nv
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Oct 24, 2009 - 08:26pm PT
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who says?
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 24, 2009 - 09:01pm PT
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So how can Christians continue to sacrifice animals for the sake of their tongue if they claim to be followers of Christ?
Universal brotherhood means nonviolence to humans AND animals.
It consists of understanding that animals have souls. They are alive, conscious, and feel pain. And these are the indications of the presence of consciousness, which is the symptom of the soul.
Why do they continue to maintain huge mechanized slaughterhouses?
We have to consider the amount of fear and pain animals are forced to endure when taken to the slaughter house.
Yet still, the secretarian religion of so called "Christianity" claims that only humans have soul and it's ok to kill animals to eat them.
Their "Thou shalt not kill" testament is always spun into an interpretation saying he (Christ) meant murder.
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WandaFuca
Social climber
From the gettin place
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Oct 24, 2009 - 09:13pm PT
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It's not quite this simple, but I think this site . . .
http://www.krysstal.com/scale.html
. . . gives an idea of distance and time scales in the universe.
Puny human, it is estimated that there are ~30 to 70 sextillion stars [(that's ~3 to 7 followed by 22 zeroes (i.e. 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)] organized in more than 80 billion (80,000,000,000) galaxies.
So what? God put all that there so we can look up and go ooh and ahh like a bunch of monkeys?
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WandaFuca
Social climber
From the gettin place
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Oct 24, 2009 - 09:20pm PT
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I sense a schism developing among the believers.
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Oct 24, 2009 - 09:25pm PT
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Uh-oh.
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Oct 24, 2009 - 09:33pm PT
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is it there for you to find/follow?
I have looked at meat from a biological standpoint. It takes a lot of grain and water to feed livestock. Energy transfer from one trophic level (organism) to another is inherently inefficient. Eating lower on the food chain is less wasteful. More recently, people propose that eating locally can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Thus, it decreases our impact on people in other parts of the world.
Maybe I can set up a rangeland grasshopper burger stand at the next facelift.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Oct 24, 2009 - 11:10pm PT
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The day that 'F' speaks for Werner, is a day I don't wanna see...
F, just leave us stupid people alone, you're so smart, go, fix the world you way!!!! You're soooooo smart!!!!!!
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 25, 2009 - 12:10am PT
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And God gave man dominion over animals.
No
Man took it to himself.
Let me kill your dog and eat him, I'm hungry .....
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oct 25, 2009 - 12:34am PT
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"That dead, barren space is written about in all the traditions - aka the cloud of unknowing." [as in not known, or can not be known, barren space, meaning nothing, as in maybe it doesn't exist at all]
but this part is where I come back in, and question?
"but yields big time if you can bear not knowing and being totally clueless and frustrated as sh#t. But that ain't easy. But if you ever find yourself there again, pitch a tent and wait"
wait for what, for how long?
1000s have done that, for longer than sane, until they died, did it do anything for them.
Did they come back before it was too late and say they met God, know God beyond what we say as "we know God"
no, they came back and said they were almost there, they needed to wait longer, suffer more, and many went that far, and they came back with nothing as well
Who has went there and came back with anything more than we can say now,
which in my opinion is nothing,
---
The problem is that you have an answer fixed in your mind: "There is no God!"
Fine. The way you define God, I'd agree. "He" does not exist. But why let that stop your investigation? You're not the first, nor will you be the last, to face this down.
The questions remain the same: Who is refuting? Who is watching? Who "cares?" And how do you KNOW that?
JL
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Oct 25, 2009 - 12:39am PT
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And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.
The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oct 25, 2009 - 01:08am PT
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Let me add this: This whole quest thing can get terribly discouraging, especially if you're looking for one thing and can't seem tol find it.
So far as "God" goes - if you have a big hang up on that name or concept, simply change it to "true self" or "higher self," meaning some part other than your conditioned ego. If you keep looking for God or your Higher Self "out there," you'll be looking forever and will, IME, find nothing, ever. It's all an inside job. But as Craig pointed out, you have to go through your own barreness. That's called the "Dark night of the Soul" in many traditions and I once had an advisor to which that "night" lasted like three years.
JL
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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Oct 25, 2009 - 01:12am PT
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One day your body will return to the Earthly Mother; even also your ears and your eyes. But the Holy Stream of Life, the Holy Stream of Sound, and the Holy Stream of Light, these were never born, and can never die. Enter the Holy Streams, even that Life, that Sound, and that Light which gave you birth; that you may reach the kingdom of the Heavenly Father and become one with him even as the river empties into the far-distant sea.
More than this cannot be told, for the Holy Streams will take you to that place where words are no more, and even the Holy Scrolls cannot record the mysteries therein.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Oct 25, 2009 - 01:46am PT
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Let's imagine a bunch of Animals, living in a zoo, evolved a higher intelligence and could speak to each other but humans couldn't grasp it.
The religious animals might adopt the monkey's view, who could see and talk best, that humans were Gods, that the zoo was intelligently designed, and that following man's laws (like not biting the cage-keepers) would result in safer-better life.
The scientific animals might observe and conclude that food came in daily timed cycles, that humans were not nocturnal, and so on.
To complicate it, perhaps scientists are off in a corner of the zoo, changing the DNA of the animals and that's what made them smart enough to start this train of thought.
It's madness to think we know how this world and humans came about. Maybe God created some sentient and powerful beings and we're their science experiment, like the zoo animals are subject to an environment which is both natural and contrived, and who are both natural and genetically modified. Who really knows?
It's madness to think that science has a handle on the BIGGEST mysteries out there, which it doesn't yet have the slightest tools to consider, or even suspect lie beyond the boundaries and dimensions we have discovered so far.
It's madness to think that, even if the prophets and saviour(s) from 2000-3000 years ago knew the deepest mysteries of God and the universe, that they had any way of conveying those to the populace at the time, who couldn't understand squat.
The mystics in more modern times, and ancient as well, who have said they have seen very deeply into these biggest mysteries, have admitted that ultimately the "biggest" truth is beyond labeling with words and concepts, that our minds are limited in their use and scope to the apparent dimension of physical reality that we exist in.
You can think of Rational thought as a computer operating system that functions very well within the scope that it has programming for, but can't see or conceptualize beyond those limits.
For all we know, the physical universe could be a speck among billions of others, or the whole shebang could be merely existing as a dream in the mind of the ultimate consciousness.
Think that's crazy? Sounds crazy but everything you experience is ONLY experienced through your consciousness. Because of that, there is NO absolute proof that anything exists in the way we think it does. Everything comes to us through our awareness so it's entirely possible that awareness is all that exists.
And even if we put that aside, all the mass in the whole earth, according to science, could be squashed in a black hole to the size of less than a tennis ball. So even if science knows more, scientists as people are still seeing the whole in an illusory fashion based on the limitations of our senses.
Why don't we all just admit that the big picture, and biggest picture, are huge mysteries? Science and religion would both have more credibility if they stuck with how much they really know so far.
Peace
Karl
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Oct 25, 2009 - 02:39am PT
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Karl, did you miss your calling, as a sci/fi author? or did I, just miss it?
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WandaFuca
Social climber
From the gettin place
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Oct 25, 2009 - 02:53am PT
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Let's be clear; Werner does not hold to Christian beliefs.
Newsflash: Werner is a krishna, he quotes the vedas left and right.
And God gave man dominion over animals.
This is according to your interpretation of christian dogma; not proof, not even evidence, nor logic. And all christians combined count for less than a third of all humanity.
So why should anyone care?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Oct 25, 2009 - 03:29am PT
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Cragman-
There are many references in the New Testament to the idea that the Jews thought Jesus might be an reincarnation of Elijah. Others imply that he was a reincarnation of Elisha. Frankly, we will never know since it's highly likely that any direct references to reincarnation were taken out later after it was declared a heresy.
A similar example of this occurs, I believe in the Book of Acts, where Paul is preaching about the Holy Spirit and the people say they have never heard of it, that Peter, first among the apostles, only baptized them in the name of the Father and the Son. Yet at the end of Matthew, Jesus is quoted as saying "Go therefore to all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit". Clearly that passage was added after the development of trinitarian doctrine as Christian beliefs were meshed with Greek philosophy. Peter of all people, would have followed Jesus' command as stated had it existed in his lifetime.
Meanwhile, if you want to look for authenticity, a good case can be made that the original New Testament scriptures were first written in Aramaic since that was the language of Jesus and the Apostles, and later translated into Greek. This is certainly the position of the Chaldean Church, one of the most ancient from the Middle East, still existing in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran and still celebrating its liturgy in Aramaic, a dialect of which is still spoken.
The Chaldean Church was excommunicated by the Greek and Roman churches early on because they disputed the trinitarian formulas and refused to call Mary the Mother of God. George Lamsa, a native speaker of Aramaic, has translated the entire Bible directly from Aramaic to English and written several books explaining that the Bible makes more sense if you know what the original Aramaic idioms meant in their own language before being translated into Greek and other languages.
Semitic grammar and Indo-European grammar are completely different and he convincingly argues that in some places, the Aramaic was mistranslated into Greek. The general sense of things is not changed but you do get a much better view of the Middle Eastern life and times and way of thinking from Lamsa. Many of the teachings also come across as more liberal and loving than generally interpreted in the West. It is also interesting to note that the Book of Revelations was not accepted by many of the Middle Eastern churches including the Chaldeans. Because it has become so quoted and disputed in the West, Lamsa translates it even though the Chaldeans do not consider it canonical.
And finally, when speaking of the Book of Revelations, many Eastern writers, including Yogananda, argue that the Book of Revelation exists on at least three different levels and that one level is a descripton of the spiritual battle that went on within the mind of the Apostle John as he meditated and sought enlightenment. The seven churches with their faults and virtues correspond exactly to the Hindu and Buddhist traditions on spiritual energy centers within the body which are known as chakras.
Bottom line: There is no one way to interpret scripture.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Oct 25, 2009 - 04:19am PT
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"Meanwhile, if you want to look for authenticity, a good case can be made that the original New Testament scriptures were first written in Aramaic since that was the language of Jesus and the Apostles and later translated into Greek. This is certainly the position of the Chaldean Church, one of the most ancient from the Middle East, still existing in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran and still celebrating its liturgy in Aramaic, a dialect of which is still spoken. "
While it's true Jesus (then called Yeshua cause Jesus is a greek word) spoke Aramaic, its doubtful that much, if any, of the new testament was written in Aramaic because none of it was written by Jesus, none of it was written while Jesus was still alive, and most of it was written far from Jerusalem and much of it was written by Paul or his followers, who never met Jesus, and relied on sources we don't know. Modern biblical scholars, believers or not, don't believe much, if any, of the New Testament was written by anyone who met Jesus in the flesh. As far as I know, almost no Aramaic manuscripts of biblical passages have been found.
The book of Revelations was one of many "apocalypse" writings that were popular in the ancient world and much crow has been eaten by preachers who used it to make predictions that have already expired. Not saying there isn't truth in there somewhere, but folks should just fess up and admit it's a mystery. The vast majority of Biblical scholars believe revelations, at it's basic level, refers to the political situation at the time of it's writing (90 ad) After all, it's perfectly clear that both Jesus and the apostles expected and announced the kingdom of heaven was coming asap and not way down the road and the Roman emperor was acting plenty like the anti-christ already.
Peace
Karl
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Oct 25, 2009 - 04:21am PT
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St. John of Patmos had a belly full of hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Whatever gets you thru the dark night of the soul.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Oct 25, 2009 - 04:54am PT
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Karl-
You might want to check out the books of Lamsa on Amazon. He claims the oldest scriptures have been preserved and they're in Aramaic which was the mother tongue of Paul and the other apostles.
As for Revelations, one of the three levels at which it exists is surely the first century political. The number 666 was a Jewish numerological reference to Nero Caesar.
I have no personal stake in picking over individual words and arguing about translations. My approach is much more personal and experiential.
Meanwhile, the Christian martyrs who marched into the coliseums to face down lions while singing hymns (and thereby converting thousands more) did not quote scripture as the canonical Bible had not been put together yet and in any case most of them were illiterate, a fact which most modern fundamentalist interpreters either don't know or ignore. The Church came before the Bible.
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